is running concurrently in London’s West Onward and Upward with the Arts End). “War Horse,” the international blockbuster, which began at the National, was also developed on Hytner’s watch. curtain-raiser His directorial talent has brought re- newed lustre to the National; his skills as Nicholas Hytner’s theatrical golden age. an impresario have also generated a robust balance sheet. (Last year, the theatre, by john lahr which is open for business fifty-two weeks a year, took in an income of more than sev- enty million pounds, almost half of which came from box-office receipts.) Once upon a time, the National, which is spread over five acres, with three stages—the Olivier, the Lyttelton, and the Cottesloe—was considered “the home counties’ theatre”; now, thanks in part to National Theatre Live—a program that Hytner developed in 2009 to broadcast the National’s perfor- mances via satellite to cinemas around the world—the joke no longer applies. In 2011, the National’s productions were seen by more than a million and a half people in twenty-two countries and broadcast in venues as far-flung as Bulgaria and Tasma- nia. Helen Mirren, who starred in Hytner’s 2009 staging of Racine’s “Phèdre,” which was N.T. Live’s début, told me, “He will be remembered as overseeing an incredible golden era in British theatre.”
n Britain, the theatre has traditionally been where the public goes to think Iabout its past and debate its future. The formation of the National Theatre, at the Old Vic, near the South Bank, in 1963, institutionalized the symbolic importance of drama by giving it both a building and state funding. (The National’s subsidy this year is more than seventeen million f you stand on London’s Waterloo unmatched in its nearly fifty-year history. pounds.) Laurence Olivier, a statue of Bridge, overlooking the Thames as it In his twenty-three-year association whom faces the current buildings, which Icarries the dust of the ages toward the sea, with the National, the past nine of them were designed by Denys Lasdun and you will find yourself in one of the most as artistic director, Hytner has been re- Peter Softley and opened for business in strategic spots in Great Britain. To the sponsible for staging some of the theatre’s the mid-seventies, was the first artistic di- east, behind the refulgent dome of St. most popular and memorable shows: rector. Hytner is the fifth. (The others Paul’s Cathedral, is the City, one of the Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel”; were Peter Hall, Richard Eyre, and banking capitals of Europe; to the west the two-part adaptation of Philip Pull- Trevor Nunn.) Presiding over a vast range are the Houses of Parliament; to the man’s “His Dark Materials”; Martin Mc- of writing, performing, designing, musi- south, at the apex of this triangle of Brit- Donagh’s “The Cripple of Inishmaan”; cal, and directorial talent, Hytner is a kind ish power, is the Royal National Theatre, Alan Bennett’s “The Madness of George of commander-in-chief of British culture. where the worlds of spirit, money, and the Third” and “The History Boys”; and, “The job is about projecting confidence politics come together in play. These days, most recently, “One Man, Two Guvnors,” about the British theatre,” he told me. the Church is embattled, the City is in Richard Bean’s adaptation of Carlo Goldo Hytner was recruited for the National disrepute, and Parliament is floundering, ni’s 1743 commedia-dell’arte classic “The by Richard Eyre, whose attention he’d but the National, under the canny stew- Servant of Two Masters” (which opens at caught with productions at Manchester’s ardship of Nicholas Hytner, is on a roll New York’s Music Box on April 18th and Royal Exchange, the English National Opera, and the Royal Shakespeare Com- Hytner at the National Theatre, in London. Photograph by Gareth McConnell. pany. “He has a face like a mime—Barrault
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TNY—2012_04_23—PAGE 32—133SC.—live art R22094—extremely Critical Photograph to be watched throughout entire press run—#2 page—new changes to title and deck at top of page from ‘Les Enfants du Paradis’—oval face, against older folk coming here and having arching eyebrows, animated, almost over- a good time,” he said, “but the age of the animated,” Eyre wrote in his diary in audience will come down when we reflect 1987, after the two first met for lunch. something other than the homogeneous “Flights of ideas and gossip, riffs of enthu- concerns of a white, middle-aged, middle- siasm, indignation, then repose; latent vi- class audience.” Hytner told me, “It was olence, subverted by a childlike smile. very callow . . . a ridiculous thing to say. He’s prodigiously talented, has a great fa- I’ve learned that there are scores of audi- cility for staging and a great appetite for ences.” Nonetheless, in his first season, de- work.” Two years later, Eyre brought termined “to charge less for a more de- Hytner into the fold as an associate direc- manding repertoire,” Hytner jump-started tor. When Eyre retired, in 1997, Hytner the slumping box office at the Olivier knew the workings of the organization Theatre—the National’s largest stage—by well, but he resisted Eyre’s pressure to selling two-thirds of the seats at ten apply for the job. “I wasn’t ready for it,” pounds and the rest at twenty-five. (Trav- Hytner told me last February, when we elex agreed to underwrite the scheme.) At met in his small fourth-floor office at the a stroke, the National opened its doors to National, overlooking a string of barges a whole new public. moored in the murky Thames. “I really Eyre had capitalized on American tal- didn’t see how to do it differently from the ent, mounting an early production of Tony way Richard had done it.” Kushner’s “Angels in America” and the Hytner had earned his fortune di- première of Wallace Shawn’s “The Desig- recting “Miss Saigon”—Claude-Michel nated Mourner,” as well as important reviv- Schönberg and Alain Boublil’s loose re- als of Tennessee Williams’s great plays. telling of “Madame Butterfly,” in which a Hytner made a counterintuitive shift away U.S. marine deserts a Vietnamese woman from the classic (and profitable) Broadway and their son during the fall of Saigon. musicals, which he felt “had all been done” (The show ran for a decade on both sides and were “in danger of defining this place.” of the Atlantic.) And he was able to in- (“Guys and Dolls,” “A Little Night Music,” dulge in the freelance director’s “life of “South Pacific,” and his own staging of glorious promiscuity,” as Eyre called it. “Carousel” had been huge hits.) Instead, he He made Hollywood movies, including débuted Richard Thomas and Stewart “The Crucible” (1996) and “The Object Lee’s campy and controversial 2003 musi- of My Affection” (1998), though he now cal “Jerry Springer: The Opera,” and threw claims to be proud only of his film adap- the stage doors open to a new, “scrappy, tation of Alan Bennett’s “The Madness of pugnacious, energetic, and ambitious” gen- George the Third” (1994). “I don’t in- eration of British playwrights, directors, stinctively think through the camera,” and performance groups. Since Hytner Hytner said. He flirted with opera, but, took over, more than thirty new writers despite some success, he felt that his work (Lee Hall, Mike Bartlett, Lucy Prebble, became too “timid” and was an “aesthetic Conor McPherson, and Enda Walsh mistake.” He told me, “My premises were among them) have seen their works per- wrong. I tried to find the kind of circum- formed at the National. In his first season, stances where I could achieve in the re- he premièred Kwame Kwei-Armah’s hearsal room an illusion of spontaneity— “Elmina’s Kitchen,” a play about drugs and a form of spontaneity which is not useful crime in London’s West Indian commu- and not expressive to opera singers trying nity, which won its author the Evening to get on with the business of delivering Standard Award for Most Promising an opera.” By the time the National job Playwright. Hytner was “slightly sticking came up again, in 2001, Hytner had “been his fingers up to the demographic that ac- around the block,” as Eyre put it, and the tually comes to the National,” Kwei- artistic directorship of the National Armah, who has now had three plays pro- offered him a unique opportunity to be- duced at the National, told me. come his own producer: if he wanted to stage a show, he had only himself to ask. n a bright morning in February, Hytner’s big idea from the outset was Hytner sat down with Simon Rus- to democratize the National. At his first Osell Beale, one of the nation’s great Shake- press conference, he made, by his own ad- spearean actors, and the designer Tim mission, a rookie mistake. “I am not Hatley to discuss the 2013 season and
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TNY—2012_04_23—PAGE 33—133SC. how he planned to approach “Timon of mations of apocalypse. There is some and her friend Carrie Pipperidge work. Athens”—the story of a wealthy Athenian sense that the whole thing can be brought The sumptuous sweetness of Richard who gives away all his money and is then crashing down.” Rodgers’s “Carousel Waltz,” playing softly, refused help by his former “friends.” Re- Hytner handed Russell Beale and underscored the frustration and constric- treating to the wilderness, Timon discov- Hatley his revised script of the play. In tion of the factory girls. A luminous clock ers hidden treasure, but instead of return- order to up the emotional ante, Timon’s face appeared on the scrim, and when the ing to Athens to rebuild his life there he loyal servant, Flavius, had been turned clock struck six and the girls were released hangs himself. into a woman, Flavia. Otherwise, Hytner into the spring twilight the exhilaration of Lean, soft-spoken, and unassuming, explained, “my strategy has been to take their temporary freedom coalesced gor- Hytner has the crisp mien of a banker. stuff away, rather than add. This charac- geously with Rodgers’s sweeping melody. He rose to greet his colleagues as they en- ter Alcibiades—who is, they reckon, writ- It was an extraordinary theatrical moment, tered, then settled back in his chair. A ten almost entirely by Middleton—has a which Hytner then topped by having the neatly printed copy of his “Timon” adap- long scene in the first half, a completely carousel materialize gradually, while car- tation was in his lap. The play, one of the incomprehensible scene. It makes no dra- nival life swarmed around a revolving least popular of Shakespeare’s dramas, matic sense whatsoever. So that went. I’ve stage. As the set designer, Bob Crowley, was, he said, a fable, “in tone and struc- added probably a total of twelve lines in recalled, “Bit by bit, one by one, these little ture unlike anything else by Shakespeare.” three places, three insertions of about four horses are being wheeled in on their own He explained, “The objective of doing the lines each, where the rich people and the plinths, going up and down, then suddenly play is to find a context where there’s gen- senators all worry about—this is all from all the horses are there. This umbrella hit uine emotional life in Timon,” who is ‘Coriolanus’—what’s going on in the the ground and opened up.” By the time usually thought to be cold and cynical. streets. What I’m wanting to do is create Billy Bigelow brazenly scooped Julie up “It’s a savage play, but I think we can get from the very beginning the sense that the onto a wooden horse, with the carousel’s everybody with him, despite the fact that place is a tinderbox; the street is full of neon canopy fanning out above them like he’s plainly a fool in that first half. There people who are on the point of eruption.” the petals of a flower, Hytner had set the is an emotional void there, which he can Turning to ideas about the set, Russell stage for passion. fill only by buying people’s friendships. I Beale said of the wilderness, “I imagined “Nick’s wonderfully objective about think it’s good to start from there, rather a sort of endless expanse of something. I sexual attraction,” the playwright Rich- than from something more venal or cor- wasn’t sure whether it was water. It felt ard Bean told me. “He’s interested in it rupt. You can empathize with a fool who very sort of flat and barren and stark. That’s whether it’s man-woman, man-man, can only imagine human relations in terms what came into my head. Exposed. woman-woman. He just understands it.” of what he is able materially to give. And Naked, almost.” (Hytner’s 2000 production of Tennessee he’s involved in a world which is com- “I love this idea of cleansing,” Hatley Williams’s “Orpheus Descending,” with pletely, bizarrely, startlingly like the world noted. Helen Mirren and Stuart Townsend, re- we live in.” Speaking of the city scenes, Hytner mains one of the best and steamiest exam- “The bonus-driven culture,” Russell said, “I think it should be like London, inations of desire I’ve ever seen.) Hytner Beale, slumped on the sofa, said. Athens, or New York, where it’s breath- appreciates the poetry of slapstick, as well “The culture where nobody is worth taking but around the corner, one block as sensuality. A scene in “One Man, anything, except in terms of what they are away, there’s people on the streets. I’d love Two Guvnors,” in which an octogenarian able to display,” Hytner said. “The unfor- to do that.” He added, of the play, “It waiter teeters at the top of a staircase and giving world of the super-rich. I think the doesn’t vibrate in its text. It starts to vi- then plummets down it, got the longest big point is that you can get an audience brate only when Timon gets angry, in the sustained laugh I’ve heard in forty years of to follow him through, if, when he turns second half. That’s when you hear Shake- theatre-going. against that world, he is expressing on our speare. So I think one of the things we’ve behalf a kind of existential dismay at the got to do is give it some visual music.” s flamboyant as Hytner’s stagings world we know we’re part of.” often are, the man himself can be so “I’m sure there’s a part of Timon that erhaps the best of many examples of Aself-effacing that he almost disappears. knows he can’t buy love,” Russell Beale Hytner’s visual music was his majestic, “He’s not a person who drives into a room said. “So that when they finally say, ‘No, Pradical staging of “Carousel,” which pre- and takes over,” Mirren said. “At his own we’re not gonna help you out,’ it’s an of- mièred at the National in 1992 and, in parties, it’s quite hard to find him.” His course moment. All the cynics in Shake- 1994, transferred to New York, where it friends and colleagues all speak of his un- speare do that. They all have a high expec- won five Tony Awards. The production, nerving habit of lapsing into silence, “of tation of what the world should be like. which Eyre remembers as “pure bravura,” not returning the ball,” as Eyre described A Romantic expectation, which is then examined the dark, subterranean sexuality this “conversational tic.” His small talk is broken.” that is traditionally kept in the background “not reliable,” according to Nick Starr, the “Well, that’s Hamlet, isn’t it?” Hytner of American versions. Instead of opening National’s executive director. Once, Starr said. “It’s ‘Timon of Athens.’ Of course, it’s the show with the famous dance prelude at said, Hytner was sitting in his office, “and Athens. But in some way it’s an abstrac- the fairground, Hytner brought the curtain we lapsed into silence for probably quite tion of the super-rich corner of every city. up on the claustrophobic, shadowy New some time. The playwright David Edgar It plays upon all the contemporary inti- England textile mill where Julie Jordan walked past, then came back and put his
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TNY—2012_04_23—PAGE 34—133SC. •• head in the door: ‘What’s happened?’ ried, twenty when Hytner was born, and Hytner is the eldest of four children. ‘Nothing.’ ‘The two of you were just sit- “restless and frustrated, understandably.” “It took me into adulthood to connect ting there in complete silence. It looked To young Hytner, the turmoil of his par- properly with my siblings,” he told me. as if something awful had happened.’ ” ents’ marriage “made no sense,” he said. “I’d withdrawn that much.” But his love Before Hytner assumed command at He added, “Not because it was particu- of classical music began when he was the National, in 2003, he was introduced larly out of the ordinary—cast of three, eight, and, on Sunday evenings, he joined to the company by its departing sachem, ran almost as long as ‘Cats’—but because his parents at the Hallé Orchestra sub- Trevor Nunn. Frances de la Tour, one of it was barely acknowledged. On the con- scription series. For his birthday every the repertory’s stars, raised her hand. “As trary, we were a model of contentment year, he was taken to Stratford-Upon- an actress in the company, I just want to and stability.” (His parents divorced in Avon, where he saw three plays in a week- welcome Nicholas Hytner. I’m sorry I 1980, and remarried in 2003.) end. He played the flute and sang in the don’t know who you are, but welcome,” Hytner retreated from what he calls Manchester Grammar School Boys Choir, she said, thus beginning an enduring “the unpredictable, uncontrollable world” and found a way, through the arts, “to friendship. Hytner, who is gay and sin- of his home life to a realm of his own in- plunge in, to understand what was really gle, now refers to de la Tour as his wife. vention. He covered the walls of his room going on in the world,” though he “tip- (When he was knighted, in 2010, de la with images of Shakespearean characters, toed around the small domestic stuff.” (To Tour told him, “I refuse to be called Lady ordered through the Times, and, in a toy this day, Hytner does not like to stage Hytner.” He said, “No, no, you will always theatre, ran a rotating repertory, in which plays about family situations; he has have the honor of being Mrs. Hytner.”) Victorian pantomime alternated with a never directed Pinter or Chekhov and has Hytner’s tendency to disappear has its miniature version of Olivier’s “Hamlet,” mostly stayed away from twentieth-cen- origins in his childhood, when he spent performed by tiny cutouts of Olivier, Jean tury naturalism. “I don’t respond to, and much of his time alone in his third-floor Simmons, and Stanley Holloway. “I re- certainly would not like to direct, plays bedroom, in Didsbury, a suburban en- member very vividly fantasizing about hav- which involve an interior journey only,” he clave of Manchester, hiding from the “do- ing a troupe of flesh-and-blood Lilliputian told me.) mestic psychodrama” of his parents’ actors,” he said. “So I probably stumbled Hytner had early dreams of becoming marriage. His father, Benet, was a book- onto the idea of directing plays, even run- an actor, but, after his first term at Cam- ish, Cambridge-educated barrister; his ning a theatre, earlier than I like to think. bridge, he had more or less figured out mother, Joyce, who was awarded an It occurs to me that forty-odd years ago I that directing would be his path into O.B.E. for her fund-raising services to the was pushing Olivier around a toy theatre theatre. He learned his craft “on the arts in 2004, was eighteen when she mar- on a wire, and now I have his job.” hoof,” through apprenticeships at the
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TNY—2012_04_23—PAGE 35—133SC.—live art—a16052 English National Opera and at Manches- not that I want the play approved. I just a rehearsal of “One Man, Two Guvnors,” ter’s Royal Exchange. “If you can’t act, and want him to approve.” Bennett usually which was about to begin its second run you can’t write, it’s the next best thing,” he slips a first draft through Hytner’s letter in the West End. On the way, Hytner said. “It gives you the impression of first- box—he lives a few leafy streets away moved as he thinks—at speed—breezing degree creativity.” It also gave Hytner an from Bennett, in Primrose Hill. Hytner out of his office, past his administrative opportunity to explore and to control the returns the script with notes scribbled in staff at their desks, through a warren of dynamics that he had avoided as a child. the margins, then follows up with more poster-lined hallways, down in an eleva- “What I do now, in part,” he told me, “is forensic suggestions. “I don’t fight,” Hyt- tor, and into Rehearsal Room 1, where to help create (if only temporarily) stable ner said of his method. “There’s no point the cast was waiting for him. With his families, which can play happily with the getting Alan to do what he doesn’t want blue jeans and boxy blue checked shirt, most outlandish forms of emotional anar- to or can’t do. I’ve always found a good Hytner could have been mistaken for a chy, all the too-hot-to-handle stuff. In the idea is to speak a little and then beat a re- stagehand until he called the actors onto rehearsal room and in the theatre, there is treat. I think a director can completely the floor. Then he entered a whole new nothing but relish for every kind of crazi- ruin a new play by pushing too hard for it zone of concentration. First, he set to ness, every grief, every danger, every cru- to be something it’s not.” work fine-tuning the comic delivery of elty, every joy.” In this context, he is un- the actor Owain Arthur, a sweet-faced afraid of failure. “I barely ever feel defeated n the case of “One Man, Two Guv- Welshman, who plays a failed skiffle in the theatre,” he said. “There is no disas- nors,” however, Hytner made a hit play player named Francis. In Act II, Francis ter that doesn’t seem survivable. I have al- Iby imposing his desires. While looking for sits at a pub, enjoying a cigarette and most total faith in the capacity of the a vehicle for the low-comic spark of confiding his feelings to the audience: group to find a way through.” James Corden, who had acted in “The So I’ve eaten. Now, after a lovely big meal there’s a couple of things I just can’t resist History Boys” and co-created the popular doing. One is having a little smoke—drags t the National, Hytner’s most con- British TV series “Gavin and Stacey,” on cigarette. Then he lifts a buttock and spicuous influence has been, per- Hytner thought of Goldoni’s “The Ser- farts—And that’s the other. Beautiful. Now, A some of you out there, who understand your haps, on the playwright Alan Bennett, vant of Two Masters,” in which he had commedia dell’arte, you hummus eaters, with whom he has collaborated on six once performed in a school production. might now be asking yourselves, “If the Har- plays. In the course of their partnership, Hytner considers re-creations of comme- lequin”—that’s me—“has now eaten what will be his motivation in the second act?” Bennett has evolved from a successful dia dell’arte “precious.” But, with Corden, Has anyone here said that? No. Good. Nice sketch writer and performer to one of the he saw a chance to turn Goldoni’s free- to know we don’t have any dicks in tonight. country’s most popular theatrical storytell- wheeling style into something contempo- ers. “Just write it, and I’ll make it work,” rary and wild, a comic counterbalance to “You know a little too much at this Hytner told Bennett when they began some of the National’s more weighty moment,” Hytner cut in. “You’ve got to working together, in 1990, on an adapta- offerings. “It’s what our theatre has always play that straighter. I think the relation- tion of “The Wind in the Willows.” And done,” he said. “King Lear rubbed shoul- ship you’ve got to have with the audience so it has proved. “He’s got a magic that can ders with the clowns here on the South all the way through is—they’re all like you, transform things,” Bennett told me. “And, Bank four hundred years ago.” To adapt all chancers. They’re your mates, not your if that’s not art, I don’t know what is.” the play, he approached Richard Bean, a audience.” According to Hytner, the early drafts former standup comic whose irreverent Arthur made the adjustment, and Hyt- of a Bennett play have “a huge amount of take on immigration, “England People ner stepped away from his chair against material looking for a nudge.” Bennett Very Nice,” Hytner had directed in 2009. the back wall to watch Jodi Prenger, as the has always written piquant dialogue, but In Bean’s make-over, which the Guardian cheeky, high-heeled Dolly, encounter he struggles with structure and spectacle. called “one of the funniest productions in Francis and his lecherous glances. “At your “The plays all require the exercise of the National’s history,” eighteenth-century service, gorgeous,” Francis says to her. stagecraft, which Alan very happily turns Venice became Brighton in 1963, and the Dolly, too, takes the audience into her over to me, because he claims he has no set pieces of commedia dell’arte—lazzi— confidence: capacity for it,” Hytner said. His nudging became pantomime shtick. The show, Calling a woman “gorgeous” is patron- has pushed Bennett toward stronger which has played to nearly a hundred- izing, and Chauvinist, obviously, but since I fancy him rotten, and I haven’t had a proper story lines, greater depth, and more sce- per-cent capacity since it opened, in 2011, sorting out for a while, I’ll forgive him. (To nic surprise to shore up his wry, bitter- exudes the noisy vulgarity of a Brighton- Francis) You’ve got honest eyes. sweet voice. “I feel entirely at home with pier entertainment. Alan’s sensibility and sense of humor,” In early March, I went with Hytner to “Could you make that mean some- Hytner said. “A lot of the time, he’s writ- thing much more obscene?” Hytner said. ing about people who have, if you like, Prenger repeated her lines, and his scru- shut themselves in a room. It’s how you tiny was almost palpable. Arms across his open the door. He makes theatre out of chest, he was speaking Dolly’s lines to that effort.” himself. Prenger addressed the audience Bennett describes his relationship with again: Hytner as “schoolmasterly”—“in the sense I’ve done worse. We’ve all done worse, that I want to please him.” He added, “It’s haven’t we, girls? We’ve all woken up “the
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TNY—2012_04_23—PAGE 36—133SC.—live spot art—r 22111G—please inspect and report on quality morning after the night before,” taken one sorry look at the state of the bloke lying next being in quiet retreat.” Hytner paused, to us, and we’ve all leapt out of bed, sat down and gazed across the river toward the and written to our M.P.s demanding that te- clock on the Savoy Hotel. “It’s what I quila should be a controlled drug. want,” he said. In 2010, at Hytner’s initiative, the Na- Hytner interrupted Prenger, then fell tional launched the National Theatre Fu- silent for about twenty seconds as the ac- ture Project, a seventy-million-pound tors waited on his words. He seemed to be plan to transform and refurbish the build- fast-forwarding, in his mind’s eye, to see ings. Below Hytner’s balcony, work on how Prenger’s choices would play later in the expansion was noisily under way. The the scene. “I’ll buy that,” he said, finally. project is expected to be completed in “You’ve got to think right through to the 2014; and then, Hytner told me, he end of it. Don’t pause as much as you are planned to move on. “I’d like to have one after ‘state of the bloke lying next to more chance at a life,” he said. us.’ Don’t speed it up—just know that Meanwhile, he was running late. On where you are heading is right through to his desk, the schedule for the rest of his the M.P.s.” He added, “You did that day was laid out in front of him: a script beautifully.” meeting; a performance of a play for Later, Francis turns to the audience primary-school children; a meeting with and asks for suggestions of a good place to a technical director about problems with take a girl on a first date, a trope that leads the Olivier’s lighting grid; a model show- to audience participation, which, since it’s ing for the newest production in the improvised, can eat up a lot of stage time, Cottesloe; an interview with the Spanish an important issue in any Hytner produc- newspaper El Pais; a briefing on a fund- tion. “He’s a man who gets bored incred- raiser later in the week; a preview of the ibly quickly,” Bean told me. When skat- new show at the Lyttelton. It was a sched- ing on thin ice, Hytner’s impulse is always ule, I suggested, that could rival the for speed. If the audience’s answers were Queen’s. ordinary, he told Arthur, “my hunch is As it turned out, the Queen, who not you should cut your losses. One in four long ago went to see “War Horse” at the times you get lucky, otherwise just play New London Theatre, where it trans- on. Don’t feel under pressure to milk this ferred after its sold-out National run, had one. You can be confident about moving been in touch with Hytner’s office to make on, confident by being really definite in Joey, the brilliant three-man puppet horse your response. ‘I’ve got a play to do here.’ ” and star of the show, an offer he couldn’t After an hour, Hytner gave a little bow refuse. The Queen had first made Joey’s to the cast. “Thank you, everyone,” he acquaintance last summer, when he put in said. “I’ll see you all next week. I’m not a surprise appearance at Queen Victoria’s gonna have much to do.” Then, as quickly stables at Windsor Palace, where she was and quietly as he’d entered, he was gone. inspecting the guns of the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery. The Queen was ack at his office, Hytner reflected on thrilled. She insisted on looking at Joey’s the highlights of his career. Of all his hooves, and asked for one of the King’s momentsB in the theatre, the one that still Troop to ride him. So Joey trotted around speaks most powerfully to him is the the stables with a soldier on his back. Now finale of his 2007 staging of “Much Ado Her Majesty was requesting Joey’s com- About Nothing,” which starred Simon pany for a private screening of Steven Russell Beale and Zoë Wanamaker as the Spielberg’s film version of “War Horse” at quarrelling Benedick and Beatrice. “They Windsor Palace this spring. The invita- dance, as required,” Hytner said. “I pulled tion was later rescinded when the event Beatrice and Benedick out of the dance. was changed, but the offer itself was news, As the show is ending, everybody else is a victory for the power of the dramatic partying, and they’ve found a quiet corner. imagination. The idea of Joey and the Once they find each other, they’ve got so Queen watching the movie together gave much to talk about. That’s all they’re the old question about the relation be- going to do for the rest of their lives: talk tween life and art new meaning. Hytner’s to each other, not at each other. The blue eyes fairly sparkled at the prospect. world is there for them. They can leave it “It’s delicious,” he said. “She’s taken a real and join it at will. Contentment is in shine to him.”
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