One of my favourite weeks of the theatrical year takes place every July when the National Theatre is suddenly overrun by armies of school and youth group performers doing their Shell Connections plays that have been specially commissioned and written for them from leading playwrights. Here, in living colour, is the future of our theatre and also the future of our world; and it’s wonderful that here, at least, they briefly collide. I usually go to at least one programme in the season, usually in the Olivier; and the space never feels more animated or charged than it does on this night. There’s a carnival-like atmosphere in the auditorium, filled to brimming with students from the other plays, parents and supporters; but this is no amdram night, either. There’s a hugely serious purpose to it, too, both in the message and the medium.
But the plays can get a little lost – both by the space, of course (one that famously often defeats stronger directors and actors), and in the productions themselves, which have been drawn in from all over the country and therefore necessarily don’t link the plays together.
So it is inspiring that Nick Hytner has now programmed a return run for three of the ten Shell Connections plays in professional productions in the Cottesloe for the first time. And while this is both the National’s most experimental space, it is also – ironically – the auditorium with its greyest audience, since seats are sparse and the mailing list fastest off the mark for it.
But the National have cannily ensured that seats are still available for the younger audiences these plays are meant to attract, and priced them accordingly to do so with seats for £10 for under 18s, with a clever kind of marketing branding that might discourage older theatregoers (an unusual approach to marketing to actually work against a particular sector) but simultaneously appeal directly to the youth audience. And it has paid off: the under 18, £10 seats account for nearly 50% of the advance sales so far.
