O
ne of the funniest moments in
Balancing Acts, the book that
Nicholas Hytner wrote about
his time in charge of the
National Theatre, is a passage
that describes his attempt to
stage Philip Pullman’s 1,258-page epic His
Dark Materials. “Squeezing his trilogy
into two three-hour plays was like pour-
ing a petrol station into a pint pot... An
act of reckless folly,” he writes, as he
describes unpacking puppets he had
no idea how to use, and manoeuvring
a huge cast around an epic story.
Yet here we are, 18 years later, in a
room above a north London library,
surrounded by puppets and actors as
Hytner prepares to unveil the theatrical
version of the 560-page The Book of
Dust: La Belle Sauvage, the beginning of
Pullman’s prequel to the His Dark Mate-
rials saga. Despite the pressure, he is
smiling broadly. “I am always happy
when I’m directing,” he says. A mood of
calm prevails as he watches the actors
and the puppets who represent their
daemons — a visible sign of their true
natures — go through an early scene.
Within an hour both puppets (elaborate
paper creations by the brilliant young
puppeteer Barnaby Dixon) and the
actors manipulating them, are finding
new and clearer ways to tell the story.
Hytner settles for a soup and sand-
wich lunch in the adjoining puppet
room, clearly more at ease than he was
the first time he went around this par-
ticular block. “Well, I know a bit more,”
he says, with a grin. “I know who to
go to. And I just love Philip Pullman’suniverse. As soon as this book was pub-
lished, I emailed him and said, can we
do it at the Bridge?”
This is the purpose-built commercial
theatre that Hytner and his producing
partner, Nick Starr, opened in 2017, two
years after they left the National, where
they had been artistic and executive
director respectively. Their partnership
there burnished Hytner’s reputation
as one of the UK’s most successful
theatre directors, building on his early
commercial success with Miss Saigon
with unforgettable productions at
the National such as The Madness of
George III, The History Boys and One
Man, Two Guvnors.
Like every theatre in Britain, the
Bridge is looking to its Christmas show
to attract back audiences, although it
did manage to struggle to some form of
life in the midst of Covid. “We opened
three times and closed twice,” Hytner
says with a wry smile. “We thought all
the money we might lose — and it was
not advantageous to us to open and
close again — would be offset by the
benefit that might accrue from keeping
in touch with our audience.”
All theatres are emerging more
slowly from the effects of the pandemic
than anticipated. “The audience is not
yet what it was before, both in terms of
numbers and of how far they will book
ahead. There is a lot of last-minute
booking going on. The hardcore audi-
ence is back, the audience that can’t
live without going to the theatre. But
that’s not the whole audience. You’re
also appealing to people who like to goCHRISTMAS THEATRE
Director, impresario and theatrical titan
Nicholas Hytner talks to Sarah Crompton
about Covid, cancel culture — and turning
Philip Pullman into a festive favourite
to the theatre three times a year. But
that habit will return, not least because,
in the end, it will be too depressing to
stick with what we all discovered in
lockdown, which is that you can have
frictionless evenings at home with
Deliveroo and Netflix. I don’t think that
will be satisfying enough in the long-
term for those who like to go out.”
Hytner is not one of those who
believe that the pandemic caused a use-
ful reset. “I don’t see any silver lining to
Covid,” he says. “It’s given everybody
financial headaches, it’s ruptured eve-
rybody’s relationship with the audi-
ence. It has left a lot of people confused
and depressed. I can’t believe we are
going to look back on it and think it was
a blessing in disguise. It just wasn’t.”
The other earthquake that happened
last year was the demand for morerepresentation after the Black Lives
Matter protests. The cast of The Book of
Dust is notably more diverse than the
one that performed His Dark Materials.
“That’s what has happened,” Hytner
says, thoughtfully. “And if you asked
me, did we move fast enough over my 12
years at the National, then the answer
is always going to be no, because you’re
always responding to great societal
changes. In many respects the theatre
gets out in front. In some respects it
doesn’t. Being fully representative is
always going to be the ambition. But
being fully representative today by def-
inition means that you’re not tomor-
row. You have to keep changing, you
have to keep challenging yourself, to
respond to what is going on.”
One new area to which theatre is
being called on to respond is the ideaCAN THEATRE
BOUNCE BACK?
The Play
What I Wrote
Sean Foley
revives his
joyful tribute
to Morecambe and Wise
(written with Hamish McColl
and Eddie Braben), at
Birmingham RepOperation
Ouch
Identical
twins Dr
Xand and Dr
Chris are back with a show
that mixes science, medicine
and fun at the Lyric Theatre,
London, from Dec 4Hex
Rosalie Craig
stars in this
retelling of
Sleeping
Beauty written by Tanya
Ronder and directed by her
husband, Rufus Norris, at the
National Theatre, from Dec 4The Lion,
the Witch
and the
Wardrobe
Revival
of Sally Cookson’s stage
adaptation of CS Lewis classic
at the Lowry, Salford, from
Dec 8, then touring until MayTHE BEST
CHRISTMAS
SHOWS
10 28 November 2021