by Peter Hall
I did some other unwise things at this time. Thinking that to achieve a high profile would help me sell the cause of the National, I began presenting the weekly arts programme Aquarius on LWT. Though it took only a day of my seven-day week, eyebrows at once shot up. It was even questioned in the House of Lords, by Ted Willis, whether it was right that the director of the National Theatre, with all his responsibilities, should do such a job. I smile wrily now when I see Jeremy Isaacs, the general director of the Royal Opera House, presenting the television programme Face to Face, without (quite rightly in my view) a mutter of disapproval.
I also agreed to feature in a Sanderson’s wallpaper advert; harmless enough, I thought. Many actors had done the same, and though the money was not much, Sanderson’s completely redecorated a room in my house at Wallingford, so that they could take the photograph they wanted. A colour picture of me sitting at my piano duly appeared in many magazines, the room glowing in the background, with the words, ‘Very Peter Hall, Very Sanderson’s’ blazoned across it. I was much sent up as a result and, given the climate then, was foolish to have done it.
Chapter Four
The National Theatre, though poised to move to the South Bank as soon as possible, played at the Old Vic during the whole of my first two years with the company. The initial repertory was patchy in quality. Jonathan Miller provided two damp squibs in Figaro and The Freeway, and Michael Blakemore added another with Grand Manoeuvres. I directed The Tempest with John Gielgud which didn’t come off either. I had tried to interpret the play as a masque, using my experience of Baroque theatre at Glyndebourne. But the play’s complexities sank under the heavy effects.
However, Bill Bryden joined the company and did a fine production of Spring Awakening. And then, in 1975, we hit form. John Schlesinger had a big success with Heartbreak House, and I added to the repertory Happy Days with Peggy Ashcroft (who had crossed the river from the RSC to help me), the premiere of Pinter’s No Man’s Land with Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, and John Gabriel Borkman with Ashcroft, Richardson and Wendy Hiller. I directed, as well, Albert Finney’s Hamlet, received half-heartedly by the critics but enthusiastically by the public. The theatre buzzed with people and we began to play to full houses.
My relationship with Max Rayne and the NT Board was also settling down by this time. Rayne had started from nothing after the war and was now one of the richest people in Britain. He was, as Goodman had remarked to me, self-made, like both of us. He had, apparently, everything. An immensely successful property developer and businessman, he had married into the royal family, and he loved helping the arts and bringing his commercial skills to bear on cultural institutions. Anxious and suspicious, his temperament teetering on the brink of paranoia, he was, as Goodman said, driven in a way that he and I were not. This anxiety gave Rayne his edge and his ability always to keep six jumps ahead. He had brilliant foresight.
Most of my difficulties with Rayne related to how much I said in public about the National Theatre’s position. John Goodwin and I talked freely to journalists. We spoke about how the new building was progressing or not progressing; we gave the facts about our finances; we answered our detractors. We both tried to be as informative at the National as we had been at the RSC. But this openness did not always please Max. In particular, he had been infuriated at a big article by Stephen Fay in The Sunday Times which went into some detail about the appalling disruptions to our plans caused by the building delays. The information Fay used was not confidential, but it was comprehensive. For the first time, Rayne sang what was to become a familiar song: ‘In future nothing can appear without the consent of the Board.’ I confronted him on this, saying the director of the National was a public figure who obviously had to be sensitive to the Board’s feelings and desires, but could not be like a ventriloquist’s doll. Our clash of views about the press rumbled on for the next fifteen years, with neither of us giving an inch.
In the spring of 1987 Mrs Thatcher was in Moscow where she revealed a sudden and surprising enthusiasm for culture when promoting an ‘artswop’ deal between Britain and the Soviets. I sent a letter to The Times pointing out that while the Prime Minister was boasting abroad about the achievements of our arts, she was busy cutting their subsidies at home. I copied the letter to Max. He replied that to publish would be counterproductive to the interests of the National, and that if I did he might have to disassociate himself from it.
When my letter was printed, that is what he did. He wrote to The Times stating how deeply deplorable it would be if my letter detracted from Mrs Thatcher’s fine achievements in Russia.
This caused the Evening Standard mockingly to wonder whether ‘the National Theatre might become as good as gold when its insubordinate director leaves next spring’. Meanwhile, the British Council surprised us by setting aside £100,000 for the NT to go to Russia. This was (for then) generosity on an unprecedented scale. Thelma Holt, in charge of the visit, told Max it was ‘one hundred per cent due to Peter’s sabre-rattling’.
Max did not think so. Our relationship over the whole of my directorship, despite being amazingly productive and loyal on both sides, never had the same candour and warmth as I had with Fordie Flower at the RSC. Max and I, though in the event we managed very well, were not natural collaborators. Private and elusive, his way was to seek a word in the corridors of power. Rightly or wrongly, I was rumbustious and outspoken. I believed that a national theatre company in receipt of public funds was a political organisation and needed to be publicly discussed. Indeed, it was our only weapon when the government was so obviously out of sympathy with us and the performing arts generally.
An incident similar to my Times letter gave me the opportunity to put on paper to Rayne exactly why I responded to our problems as I did. I wrote: ‘Of course I am sorry that you think I am damaging the National Theatre by discussing the lowering of subsidy levels to the arts, in public. If I thought that myself, I wouldn’t do it. I believe that to stay quiet when you see something that you believe is fundamentally important to the whole country being dismantled is morally not right, and tactically ridiculous. We live in a democracy. Free discussion is the only way to highlight problems. If I wanted to be pompous, I would quote a hero of mine, Edmund Burke: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”’
Now it is different. Richard Eyre, my successor, has shown brilliantly that he can run the National and keep his head well down. On the other hand, I like to think that the toughest battles have been fought. He inherited a thriving organisation, and so far has not needed to harangue the government. I hope he never will.1
Chapter Five
It was obvious in 1975 that, while work on the Olivier and the Cottesloe was way behind schedule, the Lyttelton was more advanced. Why not plan to be playing there in the spring of the following year, and open the other two theatres as they were completed? It was a tussle to get this agreed. Architects and contractors don’t like handing over buildings until they are finished, and government departments are always unhappy to support what could be seen in the end as a rash idea. However, backed by Max Rayne, I had my way. And this ‘foot-in-the-door’ policy got us started – with Peggy Ashcroft in Beckett’s Happy Days opening the Lyttelton one March afternoon in 1976.
Thus Peggy and Sam Beckett, two people I loved dearly, inaugurated the whole building. In the same week we added four more productions from the Old Vic: Ben Travers’s Plunder, superbly directed by Michael Blakemore, John Gabriel Borkman, Hamlet, and Osborne’s new play Watch it Come Down. We were launched at last. No Man’s Land followed successfully in April; The Playboy of the Western World in June.
It was, however, the hectic opening week in March that gave us the springboard we needed. I wrote in my Diaries that it had been a ‘bit of a triumph’. The Lyttelton was packed.
A few days later the associate directors had an evening meeting. We were in a celebratory mood. Then Michael Blakemore asked if he could have our attention a
nd, after a short preamble, eyes staring and in a strained voice, read out a paper he had prepared. It was a half-hour indictment of me and the way I ran the National. He said the associate directors had no power, but merely rubber-stamped my decisions, often without being consulted. He brought up the fact that I went on to commercial rates when NT productions I had directed transferred to the West End, despite this being established practice (sanctified by the Arts Council) for all directors in the subsidised theatre, including of course Michael himself. He predicted that there was a revolution breeding in the company; that the technical staff were unregarded and unappreciated; and that there was a series of press attacks on the way. Harold Pinter asked him to be more specific. ‘I cannot name names,’ he said.
I was very angry, but did my best to stay calm while trying to deal with his criticisms, particularly his main one: did the associates have less power than they wanted? There was a discussion and it was generally felt that this was not true. Michael maintained that the associates should be called an advisory body. I said advice was easy to obtain; I wanted responsibility, commitment and, if necessary, agreement to disagree. I was trying to practise cabinet government.
The meeting was inconclusive. Blakemore had not aroused support. At the end, he asked those there to take his paper away to study. He had handed it out before he read it. But as we broke up, John Schlesinger passed his copy back and everyone followed suit. Their gesture clearly marked a refusal to consider the matter any further. By May, Michael had resigned.
A few weeks after the Blakemore thunderclap, there was the expected aftermath. Gaia Servadio went for me in the Evening Standard, replaying Michael’s accusations, adding I was taking on too much, and warning of my downfall. This was followed later by (incredibly) three further big attacks in the same paper by Max Hastings, developing similar themes along with a new one – our supposed extravagance. The Standard had A Cause. They were dedicated, I thought, to getting me out of the job. Some other newspapers took up the story. I became, so they said, ‘beleaguered’. Tom Stoppard and Arnold Goodman, however, defended me vigorously in print from many of these blows; so did Michael Billington in the Guardian; and Stephen Fay in the Sunday Times wrote that the NT was ‘the target of an increasingly spiteful and envious campaign’.
Meanwhile, though the profession were still frightened of the new power of the National, the public had taken Denys Lasdun’s building to its heart. Many, it is true, disliked the outside appearance, but the inside spaces were an unqualified success. We did fantastic business, despite the hottest summer for years. I wrote in July: ‘Crowds of people milling around the theatre this lunchtime. A kite-flying festival by the river, a Dixieland band playing on the terraces, hordes of children watching a puppet show near the main entrance, a full house for the Hamlet matinée. Wine is flowing freely in the bars. It’s the way this building has to be – a place for a party.’
The fun was soon interrupted. In August our first strike closed the building for four days. I was about to start technical rehearsals for Tamburlaine in the Olivier – which the play was due to open – when some sixty stage staff walked out, refusing to work that theatre while also working the Lyttelton. This was in the middle of negotiations for a new backstage agreement. The real problem, though, was not the issue but the ringleaders. We had some troublemakers who saw the vast new building as a great opportunity for political unrest and material gain. We reckoned even then that by not sacking them, we were storing up trouble for the future.
I resisted such an extreme step at this stage. I thought that direct confrontation might close us down for months just when we had begun, and I didn’t believe we could survive that.
Three of the many talented people who worked with me through the first years on the South Bank were Peter Stevens, who was general administrator; my old friend Michael Birkett, who was my deputy; and Simon Relph who had the hardest job of all, looking after the workshops and the stage staff. Peter and Simon thought we should have risked a big strike. I, however, backed by the Board, went for a compromise solution. This decision nearly split the management apart. But the men returned to work.
We had been in an ugly situation. Most of the Old Vic stage crew had come to the South Bank with us. They were a volatile and greedy combination of militant Marxists backed by members of the South London heavy mob who were extreme Tories to a man. They had been attracted to the Vic during Olivier’s time because of the huge sums they could earn working a major repertory of plays in a cramped Victorian theatre. Every night they stayed on into the small hours, changing the sets for the next day’s performance. The overtime money gushed.
It is not enough to finish building a new theatre: there has to be time to make it function properly. I thought the architecture magnificent, but very little worked at the National during that first improbable year. The doors stuck, the hinges screamed hideously when latecomers were admitted, and the stage-lighting switchboards regularly plunged us into darkness. The address system calling the actors bled through from the dressing rooms into the auditoriums and startled the public. The ventilation system overheated the air in the hot summer and froze it as the autumn chill arrived. Everybody – actors, staff and audience – lost their way: Denys Lasdun’s direction signs were so tasteful as to be invisible. An actor in Plunder who, true to Ben Travers, spent an entire act in pyjamas, found himself in the foyer rather than in the wings and couldn’t navigate his way back to the stage. ‘Teething troubles’ said the builders philosophically, as yet another set of snags presented themselves.
I am obsessed with the need for silence in the theatre. Without it, audiences and actors cannot concentrate. Before the Olivier opened, I was anxious that its air conditioning should be soundless, and was taken in to hear it by Denys and Peter Softley, his partner. The plant was turned on. It was like the thunder of an ocean-going liner. I said it would be impossible to act against the noise. Peter Softley told me it was silent. I asked him to listen again. He repeated that it was silent. He then explained that the Olivier acoustics were of such an exceptionally high standard they picked up noise where ordinary acoustics would not.
We lived in this Alice-in-Wonderland atmosphere for eighteen months as we gradually opened more and more of the building. Quite a lot of the time we laughed. Occasionally I had to cry.
Chapter Six
During our four-day strike the troublemakers were led by a romantic-looking shop steward, Kon Fredericks. I remember him saying that our computerised and supposedly very advanced stage machinery was unworkable. As it was designed partly to cut manning levels, he was hardly unbiased. But he had a point: the installations couldn’t be trusted to operate on cue, and the automatic flying systems often, and with many a twitch, went up when they should have gone down, and down when they should have gone up.
The famous drum revolve in the Olivier was especially elaborate and complicated. Conceived to sink one entire set into the basement while, at the same time, corkscrewing another up on to the stage, it remained unfinished and virtually unusable throughout the first five years of its existence. Now it works and has featured in a number of plays, including a lavish Pygmalion, almost obscured by its twirling sets, and the spectacular Wind in the Willows. But it is still not entirely dependable. Jane Asher tells me that she came up on its revolving stage recently, making her first entrance in The School for Scandal, and found herself facing not the audience but the back wall of the Olivier.
I don’t, on the whole, like machinery in the theatre. Yet at Glyndebourne, at Bayreuth, and at theatres all over the world, I have allowed myself to be captured by its lure. Hour after hour of precious rehearsal time has been spent waiting in darkened auditoriums while technical boffins explain why something which was intended to work with amazing efficiency is not working at all. Even so, I have to say that Bill Dudley’s vision of Brunnehilde fading through the mists at Bayreuth, or John Bury’s recreation of Baroque opera at Glyndebourne, are images I shall never forget.
&n
bsp; In the Nineties, extremely elaborate design has become fashionable in the theatre. No doubt this is partly the influence of special-effect movies (which I love) and video games; partly the new opportunities offered by high-tech stage machinery; and partly a response to the fast-growing popularity of opera and its visually more opulent world. Spectacle can indeed be a potent aspect of play production. But the theatre is about imagination, not actuality. My ideal theatre would use machinery to make the changeovers in repertory from one play to another easier and cheaper, more than as an outright encouragement of spectacle.
Chapter Seven
The Lyttelton had got off to a splendid start with Happy Days and Plunder, though the first-ever tickets for the National carried the misprint ‘Blunder’. I sometimes wondered whether my foot-in-the-door policy was just that.
Because the completion of the Olivier was repeatedly postponed, I rehearsed the play that was to open it, Tamburlaine, on and off for six months. In that hot summer of 1976, in despair as to whether we would ever be able to stage the production and urgently needing to contact an audience with our work, we performed some scenes outside on the river terraces while the traffic roared by on Waterloo Bridge. The spectators were those who happened to be passing. Many stopped and watched, fascinated by the central figure of Albert Finney in the name part, rakishly wearing a beribboned straw hat against the beating sun.