Just a few weeks ago, the Sunday Telegraph’s esteemed theatre critic (and daily paper diarist) Tim Walker fired a warning shot across the bows of the National Theatre regarding not just its future funding prospects under the new Tory government, but it’s very future existence.
Outraged about the attack by one character in Blood and Gifts on Margaret Thatcher’s legacy and reputation, he wrote, “What, honestly, can I say to commend such lines as: ‘Here’s to Maggie Thatcher and her tight purse-strings. May she be dragged through Downing Street, draped in a burka, and stoned.’ Worse still, there is a line about how the former prime minister should be sodomised for the spending cuts that she oversaw after taking office. This happens to be a woman of 84 that Rogers is writing about. If the National can do no better than this, then it seems to me there is a real danger that the Coalition won’t merely think in terms of staunching the budget of the great carbuncle on London’s South Bank — they will send in the bulldozers and be done with it.”
At yesterday’s annual press conference to accompany the publication of the theatre’s annual report, Libby Purves - another theatre critic who does multiple media duties, in her case as weekly leader feature columnist, as well as weekly radio presenter - turned on her best Radio 4 voice to ask Nick Hytner eloquently, “I was wondering whether you ever worry, now that we have a sort of Tory government, about the perception of the National Theatre as being lefty - there was an outcry in one of the papers a little while ago about something one character said in the Afghanistan play attacking Mrs Thatcher.”
Hytner drily replied, “Is that the bloke who doesn’t understand the difference between a character saying something and the theatre saying it?” Purves was not to be so easily deflected, though, and continued, “Are you ever aware in programming and considering plays about the perception that does hang around in some quarters?”
“No,” answered Hytner, “the days when the arts were run by a monolithically leftist individuals are long gone; speaking for myself and the people I know, we are politically as completely as ambiguous, as subtly confused, as everybody else. There’s no particular political agenda that I know of that is adopted by this theatre.” So, rejoined Purves, “Do you feel you should reply when people say things like that?” Hytner saved his best till last: “I think we shouldn’t reply to that; we felt slightly embarrassed for him.”
There’s definitely a reeling sense of embarrassment when you read a theatre critic who doesn’t know whether Othello or Iago is black or thinks that Sondheim is a terrible lyricist, of course. But if it is easy to give short shrift to such absurd arguments as Walker also advanced in a longer Telegraph leader piece that I won’t embarrass you by quoting aloud again, Hytner is bracing himself and the theatre nevertheless for the inevitable cuts that are on the horizon.
Of course, one of the problems is that nobody knows yet just when and how severely they will strike, so a lot of the talk is purely hypothetical. The National’s soon-to-depart chairman Sir Hayden Phillips, himself once a treasury department man himself, spoke from the inside when he spoke of the jockeying that will be happening within the department now as to how to apply the cuts that need to be made, and how policy is likely therefore to change up to the last minute. (Hytner himself spoke of the swingeing cuts announced the day before to the child benefits system as “jawdropping”).
But Hytner, as leader of the National Theatre, sees it part of his duty to lead from the front, and is a valiant spokesperson for a sector that, his own building’s self-interest apart, could be under serious attack. While the National itself has already proved itself very adept at drawing on philanthropy to balance out its books - it has moved from being 50% reliant on state subsidy to only 30% in the last eight years - that may not be an option for many theatres beyond London, where the tradition of philanthropy for the arts is not nearly as well established.
But more than that, the National is also now setting itself up as a national resource, in every sense, and is looking to offer its back office services free, or at only small cost, to other theatres, from legal representation to the operation of a more centralised box office. NT Live - the National’s brilliant scheme of taking its productions into cinemas around the country and even the globe - is already being rolled out as an offering for Complicite and the Donmar Warehouse to get its productions seen more widely through; and although the last weekend’s 02 concert of Les Miserables was not part of the scheme when it was similarly broadcast into cinemas, the National’s executive director Nick Starr revealed that the National had lots of conversations with them to help them do it.
Fair comments all round. But doesn't the National,being THE "National" theatre have a directorial moral obligation in examining pernicious content in it's output? Or can it balance this next time with a play where Tony Blair is crucified for the war-mongering a*** that he was? Peace envoy now...how ironic.
While the National may have it's odd quirks here and there , it is one of the glories of Cultural life in the Britain . It stands as a model for every other institional theatre throughout the world. Not only in the shows that it produces but in the way the building itself stands as a magnet for theatre artists, theatre lovers and tourists of every size shape and description. If one play has an insulting remark or two about Mrs Thatcher so what? This isn't America where if a theatre gets a paltry sum from The National Endowment for the Arts ( and all of their sums are paltry because their total budget is $130 million ) they are then very careful about what they produce so that they don't offend the funders. This is Great Britain where culture is an established and important part of everyone's daily life ( if they choose it to be) . Nick Hytner's response is entirely appropriate. Shame on Tim Walker for even bringing it up.
"This happens to be a woman of 84 that Rogers is writing about": actually, no. The scene in question is set in July 1983. He's writing about - and, more pertinently, his character is talking about (must an author endorse every word uttered by every one of their characters? What kind of drama would that make for?) - a 57-year0ld Prime Minister who, at that time, was presiding over the highest EVER recorded rates of unemployment, and who had recently also taken the inflation rate back to within a spit of its mid-70s zenith; who had just taken the country through a war that was caused primarily by the incompetence of her own politicians and diplomats (the character in the play, nominally a diplomat himself, might have had cause to reflect on that); and who was destroying the social and political consensus that had existed in the country. The language expended on her can be interpreted simply as a result of that destruction of moderation, and thus as poetic - yes, poetic - justice.
Mrs Spratt, what's "pernicious" or morally dubious about having a character badmouth that mad old bat?
"Mad old bat", by the way, © Michael Billington a few years ago.
Ha ha! Refer back to the incomparable 'Yes Prime Minister from 1987, episode entitled 'Patron of the Arts', wher Hacker suggests selling the NT and making it a touring company to become a truly National Theatre. Plus ca change!
@ Ian S
Oh I couldn't possibly comment -my great aunt said NEVER talk politics...and you're as bad calling her "a mad old bat..." you should write a play and get it on at the National he he.
It's pernicious because it's lazy & most often expressed in sexist terms.
It's like the Ulster Unionists demonising the Pope & it looks like it might be going on for as many centuries.
I'm so bored of it - & I've always voted Labour & my Dad was on strike for most of the 80s.
Why not slag off Reagan - just for the change???
1) The Ulster Unionists don't do it - extreme Protestants, led by Paisley, who has a Unionist party of his own, do it.
2) Whatever hardline atheists may suggest, the office of the Pope has not been responsible for the destruction of any country's industrial and social fabric, as Thatcher was.
3) Reagan wasn't ours. Though arguably he was, to a degree, Thatcher's.
4) A significant part of her legacy has been the Labour Party since the death of John Smith.
I've heard insults towards the Pope all the time from mild Protestants and secularists - it's that kneejerk anti-Catholicism you still get in the whole of Britain - I was just giving an example of where it did the most damage.
You could argue that the office of Pope destroyed the fabric of the old Pagan world, tied people to a social fabric they didn't want to be part of & would kill anyone who tried to object. Until recently religion was politics & it still has political effects.
In the Global economy - everything is ours - & it would be nice to have Mrs Thatcher's politics put in their wider context. She didn't dream it all up on her own.
British Industry was already in trouble - it was tied to the Empire and when that market was cut off it wasn't quick enough to change. It could have died much slower but it was still dying.
The Labour Party began to change in the 1960s when it's middle-class membership started to dramatically increase. That's the real turning point - Tony Blair was part of that. I also think his devotion to Bill Clinton's politics of triangulation was more important than his similarities to Mrs T.
Is it really so much trouble to look at wider forces - rather than just taking cheap shots at one female politician?
At least I wouldn't have heard it all before.