The first thing to strike one about Rufus Norris’s plans for his first season as the National Theatre’s director is that they are both eclectic and expansive. They cover a wide front: new plays, old classics, revivals of modern standards. What also hits one is Norris’s desire to surround himself with a new team. Incoming associates include Lyndsey Turner, Tom Morris, Paule Constable and Dominic Cooke. Among the freelance directors, one also finds Simon Godwin, Sally Cookson, Indhu Rubasingham and Ian Rickson. Most of them already have some link with the National, but there’s no sense that Norris is simply offering a replica of the Hytner years.
New writing has always been built into the National’s DNA, but Norris looks like increasing its prominence. We’re promised new work from Caryl Churchill, Patrick Marber, Wallace Shawn, Duncan Macmillan and Alice Birch. It’s a rich mix of young and old, but what’s significant is its non-reliance on such established NT names as David Hare, Alan Bennett and Michael Frayn. That’s not to say they won’t be there in the future: simply that Norris, like an incoming football manager, is keen to introduce his own formation.
The same applies to the choice of revivals from the modern repertory. Caryl Churchill’s play about the English civil war, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, at last looks like getting its due. Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good and August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom also deserve their place in the rep. I suppose the big question concerns the number of what are termed “reimagined classics”. I can’t wait to see what Carol Ann Duffy does with the medieval drama Everyman, which will star Chiwetel Ejiofor: a mouthwatering prospect. But I’m keeping an open mind on Ben Power’s condensation of three DH Lawrence plays, retitled Husbands and Sons, which have always struck me as individual masterpieces in their own right. Likewise, we’ll have to see just what Patrick Marber means by offering “an unfaithful version” of Turgenev’s A Month in the Country.
One of the National’s many functions is to keep the classic repertory alive, and I’m cheered to see there are planned revivals of Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem and Harley Granville Barker’s magnificent dissection of politics and personality, Waste. On paper, especially with the expanding use of the National’s Temporary Theatre, it all looks richly promising. The test in the years ahead will be whether Norris can strike the right balance between celebrating the new and honouring, rather than simply rewriting, the best of the past.
