In Daniel Rosenthal’s brilliant tome, “The National Theatre Story,” about Great Britain’s illustrious institution on the Thames, the actor Henry Goodman is quoted as saying, “There’s something about being at the National which encourages [you] to find the balance between the vanities of theatre and the virtues of it — because without the vanities nothing would happen.”
Fights, feuds, and egos, as well as triumphs, are all detailed in Rosenthal’s exhaustive overview of the National Theatre’s history, from the less-than-stellar 1963 inaugural production of Peter O’Toole in “Hamlet,” directed by Laurence Olivier, its first artistic director, to the more recent successes of “The History Boys,” “War Horse,” and “One Man, Two Guvnors.”
The book is a welcome companion to the TV special, “National Theatre: 50 Years on Stage,” which will air on PBS’s Great Performances series beginning on February 14. This valentine to the institution, directed by NT’s artistic director, Nicholas Hytner, includes rare archival footage — Maggie Smith swanning around in a 1964 revival of Noel Coward’s “Hay Fever” — as well as performances by the likes of Judi Dench (as Shakespeare’s “Cleopatra” and later singing “Send in the Clowns” from “A Little Night Music”); Michael Gambon and Derek Jacobi in a scene from Harold Pinter’s “No Man’s Land”; Helen Mirren in an excerpt from Eugene O’Neill’s “Mourning Becomes Electra”; and, most movingly, Dame Joan Plowright resurrecting a speech from George Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan,” a role she originated in 1963.
There is also a very funny scene from Alan Bennett’s “The History Boys,” which serves to underscore an important thread throughout Rosenthal’s colorful tapestry: the National Theatre as an invaluable source of Broadway product through the decades. “The History Boys,” which won the 2006 Tony Award for Best Play, is just one of more than three dozen productions that were imported to great acclaim and numerous awards from the National Theatre. These included not only Tom Stoppard’s Broadway debut, 1967’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” but also, remarkably, the American premieres of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” championed by Harold Pinter, and Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” both of which had first been presented at the National’s London home. Rosenthal also makes the case that the National rehabilitated Arthur Miller’s reputation, turning his 1994 Broadway flop of “Broken Glass” into an award-winning success with a West End transfer, a national tour, and a TV film.
“The NT’s impact on American theater is obvious from those productions,” Rosenthal said. “I hope I’m not paraphrasing him badly but Arthur Miller praised the theater for keeping the straight play alive on Broadway and the warmth of its audiences for sustaining him. He’d become very embittered about the state of theater in America because he could not get his [new] plays produced there.”
Of course, as a government-subsidized theater, the National was in a prime position to make a commitment to develop new plays and musicals without attending to the commercial pressures of either presenting the work of established writers or casting major box-office stars. Its governing ethos, Rosenthal said, was to put on a show in which quality control was paramount. The rule went: “If it does well and transfers either to the West End or Broadway, that’s great. But the moment you start thinking about that first, that’s the moment when things start to break down.”
Nonetheless, given the temptations of prestige and lucre, a certain amount of drama did arise over the Broadway transfers of National Theatre productions, especially during the controversial tenure of Peter Hall, who succeeded Olivier as artistic director. A case in point, covered in a riveting chapter in Rosenthal’s book, was Hall’s production of “Jean Seberg,” a 1983 Marvin Hamlisch musical about the tragic American actress who, at age 17, had been discovered by director Otto Preminger to star in his 1967 film, “Saint Joan.” Hounded by J. Edgar Hoover for her leftist politics and maligned in the tabloids, Seberg eventually committed suicide, at age 40.
In a recent interview with ARTINFO, Rosenthal discussed the history of National Theatre productions on Broadway, what it meant to both sides of the pond, and why “Jean Seberg” aroused such antipathy in the British press.
When did the relationship between Broadway and National Theatre first take root?
From the beginning, really, with Peter Shaffer’s “The Royal Hunt of the Sun” [presented in 1964 at the National and on Broadway in 1965]. With Christopher Plummer as Pizarro, it featured a huge cast and was much too expensive for a West End commercial producer like Michael Codron to put on. So what you had was the National using its subsidy to put on a very ambitious play and then when it did transfer it became a virtuous circle for the theater because of the money they made as the originating producer.
I gather from your book, the idea of transfer gained traction with Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.”
It did. The National made the equivalent of a seven-figure sum from Stoppard’s play because [Broadway producer] David Merrick financed the production through his foundation and gave the theater 50 percent of the profits. Later on, the same applies to Peter Shaffer’s plays, “Equus” and “Amadeus,” which brought in hundreds of thousands of pounds to the National. They became an amazing asset for the theater, especially “Amadeus” because of the success of the film.
National Theatre productions usually move first to the West End and then to Broadway. Which venue is more lucrative?
Oh, it’s Broadway because of the size of the theaters that those plays went into, and the length of the run. By the time they transferred to the West End, 80,000 to 100,000 people had already seen them at the National. Most of the Broadway audiences had never seen them and it’s a much bigger market.
When Peter Hall came along, he raised the ante regarding transfers, didn’t he?
He absolutely did and that was a source of a great deal of criticism. People were concerned that he had one eye on Broadway and that was why he was putting on this musical about an American with music by Marvin Hamlisch. And the real crux of the matter is that he was directing. All of the media criticism came from the idea, “Hang on, Peter is about to have a four percent royalty on Broadway because of this.” They felt that he was being disingenuous in saying that he was doing it because it was a great piece of art.
Was the backlash in part because Hamlisch was coming off of this tremendous success with “A Chorus Line”?
I think no. If he’d handed it off to another director at the National and he’d been able to say, “I’m purely the producer here,” it would have been fine. Of course, you had [playwright] David Hare going around saying, “What the hell is Hall doing with this musical at the National?” The most damning criticism and the most valuable praise comes not from the press but from your practitioners and closest colleagues. It’s a jury of your peers.
In your book you provide the statistical evidence that during Trevor Nunn’s tenure as artistic director, 20 percent of his entire audiences came from the six musicals he produced, presumably American musicals. Did he also have his eye half-cocked on Broadway as well?
No, I don’t think they’re comparable for the simple reason that Peter Hall was always under immense financial pressure because of his large family, the alimony, and school fees. He’d never made the money that Trevor Nunn had made from his musicals so by the time Nunn became director of the National, his estimated net worth was 30 million pounds a year and an estimated income of two million pounds from royalties from “Les Miserables,” “Starlight Express,” and “Cats.” He was as financially secure as any theater director in Britain could be. I think with him, as with Richard Eyre [his predecessor], it was, you might say, that they were raising the white flag saying, “We simply can’t make the Olivier work with simply a classical repertoire. We have to do musicals to shore up the finances.” It wasn’t a black and white issue of being for or against musicals at the National. It was the disproportionate size of the audience for them.
Did the disaster of “Jean Seberg,” as well as the musical version of “Carrie” at the Royal Shakespeare Company, quash this idea of the National as a “tryout venue” for Broadway-bound musicals?
It did quash it. You do see Broadway producers sniffing around shows at the National but that’s in an attempt to get on the ground floor for the transfer. What does develop is how to make these transfers in the right way so that the National Theatre could maximize the amount of money which they could make from having originated the shows at their own expense. And that’s what you have with the relationship between the National and Boyett Ostar [Productions] on such productions as “The History Boys,” “War Horse,” and “One Man, Two Guvnors.”
Did the National actually put up capital for these productions?
I’m not one hundred percent sure of how or whether the National has been a genuine, sign-on-the-dotted line upfront capital investor in any previous Broadway transfer as opposed to the “National Theatre presents.” The attitude has always been and still is, “We are a non-profit theater and therefore should be risk-averse in commercial activities.” That was the reason why the board would be nervous about putting one hundred thousand pounds into a transfer. If it failed and they had to write it off, that’s a lot different in accounting and philosophy from investing a hundred pounds to put on a challenging play in one of the theaters that then draws only a 30 percent audience. The risk is always towards putting on the best possible show of the highest quality.
A pre-recorded “live” performance of the National Theatre’s Tony-winning production of “War Horse” will be shown on February 27 at the Ziegfeld Theatre and other selected theaters across the country as part of the National Theatre Live series.
