Every director of the National Theatre redefines the building according to his – and so far it has always been a male vision – cherished ideas. Rufus Norris, who has announced he will be stepping down in 2025, was no exception. His dream was of a theatre that, in its repertoire and its audience, reflected our multicultural society and that embraced new writing. In that sense his mission has been successfully accomplished. The only question is whether, in the process, the classical canon has been neglected.
Early in his tenure I confronted Norris with the issue and suggested we were being starved of the great classics. He replied that not only was new work his prime concern but also he wanted to achieve gender parity in the National repertoire: something that was impossible if you relied heavily on a male-dominated classical past. We should credit him with opening up the institution to genuinely diverse audiences: I have never forgotten the thrill of sitting at shows such as Small Island, “Master Harold” … and the Boys and Inua Ellams’s Nigerian-set version of Three Sisters.
Norris also did something else important. I remember the late Anthony Howard, asked for an instant assessment of Harold Wilson’s achievement when he resigned as prime minister, said: “He kept the show on the road.” The same might be said of Norris. He inherited many good things from his predecessor, Nicholas Hytner, such as the NT Live broadcasts. He also ensured that the National has played during his tenure to 88% capacity. But Norris, like everyone else, had to cope with the Covid crisis and he made sure the organisation kept ticking over, through raids on the archive for streaming, as well as a radical new Romeo and Juliet film, staged without an audience but with a wealth of inventive camerawork.
Norris steered the institution through a major crisis, launched a number of innovations such as NT Collections, making world-class theatre available to schools, and promoted a green agenda. He also directed a number of good productions, including Small Island, Carol Ann Duffy’s Everyman and Lucy Kirkwood’s Mosquitoes. Whenever I met him in recent years, however, he was either embarking on or returning from fundraising missions abroad, and I began to wonder whether any director of the National Theatre should have to spend so much energy acting as a salesperson.
The big question is who will succeed Norris in 2025. London, for the past week, has been abuzz with rumours that Indhu Rubasingham, who has worked many times at the National and who recently resigned as director of the Kiln theatre, is a favoured successor. I would also guess that the hat of Josie Rourke, who successfully ran the Donmar and who has lately directed Dancing at Lughnasa in the Olivier, will be in the ring. If he is interested I imagine that Rupert Goold, who has made the Almeida London’s most consistently exciting theatre, would be a contender. But, whoever takes over, Norris has ensured one thing: that the National cannot ever go back to being an exclusively white enclave on either side of the footlights.
Top five shows during Norris’s tenure
1. Small Island (2019) A dazzling version of the Andrea Levy novel capturing the trials, as well as the tenacity, of the Windrush generation leaving Jamaica for surly, sodden Britain.
2. The Lehman Trilogy (2018) Epic account, played by just three actors and directed by Sam Mendes, of the rise and fall of an immigrant family who become a symbol of western capitalism.
3. Death of England (2020) Roy Williams and Clint Dyer addressed issues of class, race, family and nationhood in a one-man play blisteringly performed by Rafe Spall.
4. The Flick (2016) Annie Baker’s amazing play was nominally about changes in cinema technology but really about the lost souls in a Massachusetts movie house.
5. Barber Shop Chronicles (2017) Inua Ellams’s play exhilaratingly crossed time zones and countries to explore the arguments and anecdotes of African barber shop culture.
