Hytner attacks the Arts Council
Announcing the National Theatre plans for 2008 today, Nicholas Hytner told a Press conference that the current situation regarding the proposed Arts Council England cuts in funding was a terrible mess, ill thought through and unfair.
He revealed that he had personally lobbied ACE on behalf of the Bush, the Northcott in Exeter and the National Student Drama Festival. He was not remotely satisfied with the justifications he had been given.
With regard to the Northcott, where he worked early in his career, Hytner said the situation was similar to the threat to the Bristol Old Vic: the wrong people were being punished for any supposed faults in planning or policy. Those people were the audience the theatre serves. It was the Arts Council’s duty, he implied, to sort out the board and the management at such important regional venues.
Hytner was optimistic, though, that in the wake of the McMaster report on excellence in the arts, there was a chance for a new start, with new ACE appointments. “This whole business has been a strategic catastrophe, which is a shame because what they are trying to do in principle is probably right. The trouble with some people in power is that they not only invent the bollocks, they live the bollocks as well.”
Beyond the announced programme, Hytner confirmed that he plans to direct Hamlet with Rory Kinnear, but was waiting until “the world and his wife” have done it, a reference to the upcoming versions starring Jude Law at the Donmar in the West End and David Tennant at the RSC.
He also said that he felt the British theatre was more confident than it’s ever been and that the desire of gifted young actors and writers to work in theatre was “very strong”; the theatre reflected this to a greater extent than did the contemporary cinema.
While journalists sipped coffee and quizzed Hytner in the Olivier stalls area, the finishing touches were being put to the Noel Coward exhibition downstairs. This opens next week, just as Present Laughter completes its run in the Lyttelton and the new collection of Coward letters retains its deserved prominence in the book shops.
The exhibition looks well worth visiting, and the irony of a Coward celebration in the hallowed precincts of our leading subsidised monolith would not be lost on the reactionary old boy, even though he was immensely flattered by the NT’s 1964 revival of Hay Fever at the Old Vic. There are some real treasures, not least the Master’s dressing gown and monogrammed bedroom slippers.
There are some good instances of his talent with crayon and brushes, too. I especially like the covers he designed for his own collections of short stories. One of them, Pretty Polly Barlow, was published in the same year as the NT’s Hay Fever and his own less than successful musical version of Blithe Spirit, and he wrote in his diary:
“High Spirits is hobbling along convulsively. Hay Fever more and more triumphant. Pretty Polly Barlow has so far received one abusive notice from a ghastly young squirt called Julian Jebb in the Sunday Times and two other rather patronising ones.”