Nicholas Hytner and the UK National Theatre

After five years running the National Theatre, Nicholas Hytner looks pretty chipper - as well he might, since the place, thanks to shows such as War Horse and Much Ado About Nothing and their cheap ticket policy, is averaging over 90% capacity. When it comes to outlining the year ahead and his radical plans to change the whole audience experience, he seems ready to turn cartwheels.

At one point, Hytner, who has the cropped hair and the mobile features of an avant-garde French mime artist, begins a sentence: "To look at what we're doing over the next 18 months is a
sign of ... "

" A golden age?" I prompt, eager to fill the Pinterish pause.

"No, I'm not going to say it," resumes Hytner. "But we are the beneficiaries of an extraordinary alignment of the stars. We've got new plays from Howard Brenton, Tony Harrison, Michael Frayn and David Hare. Simon Russell Beale will be doing an early Pinter, A Slight Ache, and I don't believe Tom Stoppard and Alan Bennett are remotely finished. Contrast this with the British film industry, which every year produces a handful of smashing films but which is woefully patchy. There is no sense, as there is in the British theatre, of a community of artists who are confident about their form, engaged in a dialogue with the past and eagerly debating the future. And behind the senior writers there's another generation developing the same kind of muscles."

To prove his point, Hytner cites the writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz. Her new play, Her Naked Skin, about the suffragette movement, will take its place in the Olivier rep alongside work by Shaw, Middleton and Tony Harrison. But what is astonishing is that this will be, as far as anyone can recall, the first play ever by a woman writer to be seen on the National's biggest stage. I put to Hytner a point recently made to me by a publisher: where are the dramatists under 40 who have the stature that Pinter, Stoppard, Hare, Churchill and others had achieved by that age?

"It's a fair question," says Hytner, "but conditions have changed. The older generation was essentially writing plays that would survive under the robust conditions of a West End theatre. Now it's possible to make a career by occasionally knocking out a play for a studio theatre, and then accepting a TV commission from editors who come calling at the first sniff of talent. I can't blame writers for doing it because they all have a living to earn."

Another key difference, Hytner believes, is that writing big parts for charismatic actors has gone out of fashion. "But I think all this is set to change. We have a lot of commissions that will see the new generation tackling bigger stages. What I think dramatists are learning is that the classic repertoire, with the possible exception of Chekhov, depends on succulent star parts."

Hytner is visibly buoyant about a future that will include Ralph Fiennes as Oedipus and Fiona Shaw as Mother Courage, alongside innovative work from Katie Mitchell and Lloyd Newsom's DV8. But it is when he looks to the longer term that Hytner's real radicalism becomes apparent. Having agreed to stay another five years at the National, he will be there for the 2012 Olympics. However, he sees 2013, the National's 50th anniversary, as a more significant date, and he and his executive director, Nick Starr, are already laying big plans.

Chief among these is a plan to redevelop a plot of land behind the theatre, currently a coach park, and turn it into an educational centre. "I've talked a lot to the British Museum's Neil MacGregor, who is on our board, about the sea-change in museum culture. Now, if you want to look at a Greek vase, it's assumed that you want to know where it came from and what it says about the society that used it." Hytner wants the new centre to put the National's work into context: if the theatre is staging Major Barbara, then there will be a programme of films, lectures and workshops about Shaw running alongside.

This is all part of a grander scheme to make the theatre more transparent - literally. "We want to make the National more porous," Hytner explains. "We want to knock through those brick walls at the back, so people are able to look into our workshops. I'd even float something that would horrify most of my colleagues: that rehearsals should be visible and accessible. People are fascinated by how the performing arts are put together. Theatre has been slow to catch up on this. We're also planning to go greener by creating a park on the roof of the building."

But while the Hytner-Starr vision is far-sighted, eyebrows may well be raised at the timing. The National is seeking to expand at a time when other theatres are forced to contract because of Arts Council England cuts. The National has been promised a 2.7% increase on its current £18m grant. Even though Hytner is not opposed to the notion that funding periodically needs to be diverted from old groups to new, he is appalled at the way it has been done. "On behalf of the entire theatre, I look at what has happened over the last few weeks with total dismay."

So is it time to scrap the arts council and accept direct funding from the government? Hytner views the idea with horror. "I was not in favour of John Tusa's [2007] report to the Tories, which argued that the National, and other big clients, should be hived off and directly funded. We're part of the wider theatrical ecology and neither we nor the RSC are so special we should be protected from the vagaries of arts funding."

In the past Hytner has worked in France, where the arts are funded directly by the state - not a salutary experience. "Some years ago I was working at the Châtelet in Paris, funded directly by the city. The director went to Chirac, who was then mayor, and said that since the Paris Opera, under Mitterrand's power, had a Ring cycle, they should have one, too. 'How much will it cost?' asked Chirac. '100m francs,' he was told. He coughed up and on the way back the director's assistant asked his boss how he knew a new Ring cycle would cost 100m. 'I didn't,' he said, 'but if it's less we'll keep the change.' And so they did: not for themselves but for the theatre. I'd hate to get into that kind of political jockeying - and it's not hard to imagine a government that wanted to impose suffocating cultural policies on the arts."

Hytner believes in the arms-length principle. He also wants a return to peer review of existing companies. "I firmly believe the chairman of the arts council should be someone like a former head of the Tate or the National who knows the arts inside out. But I'm not, I assure you, applying for the job."

I'm sure not, since he currently has his hands full. After directing Major Barbara, he tackles Verdi's Don Carlo at the Royal Opera House and then returns to the National to direct an unnamed new play and a Racine. Of his current home, he disarmingly says: "I can't imagine not being here."

One day, he admits he'll have to; but not before he and Starr have utterly transformed both the building and its ethos and made it a space where, as at the National Gallery, you go not just to look but to learn.

Hytner's National Theatre
04.02.2005: Hytner plugs National into political circuit
04.02.2005: Three years late, Leigh comes to the National
22.03.2004: Is Nicholas Hytner really as good as the hype?
22.03.2004: Richard Eyre and Jude Kelly assess Nicholas Hytner's first year
06.02.2004: National uses Rumsfeld throwaway line to put spotlight on Iraq
06.02.2004: Hare embraces challenge of the big space
29.09.2003: Leader: Stage for the people
25.09.2003: Star turns and cheap tickets help fill National
22.07.2003: NT director scores a hit, a very palpable hit
24.01.2003: Tickets for £10 at National
05.12.2002: Hytner era opens with cult opera
04.11.2002: Theatre chief warns of arts apartheid
03.11.2002: Bard is a mystery to our lost generation, warns arts boss
26.09.2001: Hytner looks to new identities for National
25.09.2001: Miss Saigon director to head National Theatre

Reviews
14.01.2004: The Permanent Way
05.01.2004: His Dark Materials
30.05.2003: Elmina's Kitchen
06.06.2003: His Girl Friday
18.07.2003: Edmond
14.05.2003: Henry V
30.04.2003: Jerry Springer - The Opera

Profiles
26.09.2003: The Guardian profile: Nicholas Hytner
26.09.2001: Michael Billington on Hytner: Very much his own man

Useful links
The Royal National Theatre