Shakespeare at the NT: The 21st Century

National Theatre

Friday 22 April 2016

Review by Amy Lee, BMus Music

Nicholas Hytner, the former director of the National theatre talked to Abigail Rokison-Woodall about his past Shakespeare productions at the NT.

Hytner has directed many of his plays at the NT including Henry IV Parts I and II, Henry V and The Winter’s Tale. An incredible feat considering he only began studying Shakespeare at A-Level.

Hytner’s honest critical analysis of his past productions did not remove his stage aura in this discussion.  It intensified it.  Comfortably sat next to Abigail Rokison-Woodall, Hytner answered questions that chronologically covered his Shakespeare productions, beginning with his memories of the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1980s: “I can kind of remember what they felt like, I can remember a mind-set that I probably adopted at that time and I remember the RSC shows being a bit too operatic, big and monumental”.  Hytner admits he was “thinking harder at the RSC” but was offering operatic commentaries on the plays rather than getting “under their skins”. 

Speaking on his 1990 King Lear production starring John Wood as Lear, he credits the actors for truly getting “under the play’s skin”.  Hytner admits that he still sees King Lear as a puzzling play: he can’t get his head around it like he can Hamlet.  Notably, Hytner’s Hamlet in 2011 had a contemporary setting with striking edits of the script including Ophelia being murdered.  Despite the contrasting ambiguity of Lear’s mind-set to his closer perception of Hamlet’s, Hytner explains how audiences for centuries have been moved by the reconciliation at the end of King Lear.   

You could tell that Abigail Rokison-Woodall was at ease in this discussion.  She wasn’t afraid to ask direct questions to Hytner, looking at his earlier, more abstract productions in relation to his modern ones that are “grounded in a concrete reality”.  Hytner looked critically at his production of Twelfth Night at the Lincoln Center in New York, telling Rokison-Woodall that he got “absurdly hung up on Illyria as an exotic, invented stage world”.  When later working his first Shakespeare play at the National Theatre, The Winter’s Tale, he made sure he didn’t make this mistake again.  Hytner speaks of how relatable jealousy is in The Winter’s Tale and how he consciously found parallels with the play and his own personal friendships. 

A large part of the discussion focused on one of Hytner’s most contemporary and relatable productions: Henry V.  Despite opening a few weeks after the beginning of the Iraq War, Hytner claims: “I didn’t go into it, saying we’ll do this play and turn it into a great anti-war play.”  However, as the year went on he felt obliged to relate the play to the country’s predicament; turning it into a play about a British leader sending a country to war with questionable grounds in its national law.  Hytner stresses how Adrian Lester looks, sounds and feels like a war leader and was therefore perfect for the title role.  Ultimately he admits that he underestimated how furious the audience were with Tony Blair: “As much as I insisted it’s still a play about Henry V who attacked France and won The Battle of Agincourt, no one was really going with that.”  He humorously adds, “Adrian was a lot more persuasive and attractive than Blair felt at the time so the play did have an ambivalence”.                                  

In her forthcoming new book, Shakespeare in the Theatre: Nicholas Hytner, Abigail Rokison-Woodall looks at his career in relation to his vast output of Shakespeare productions. Order the book via Amazon