National Theatre All Season Announcements

Alex Jennings, Roger Allam and Lindsay Duncan. Like they have done research on demographic's fave actors. O SRB absent, must be an oversight. I expect he will appear later.
(Did I ever tell you I was at school with Ms Duncan? No. Well, I was. There is more to tell but all I will say is that I have yet to see a better Hermione in The Winter's Tale. Ever. )

A lot of interesting stuff there, although short on new plays outside the Dorfman (a common issue).

Does When We Have Sufficiently etc. really need a ballot? It's going to be relatively experimental and is on for quite a while. Will Cate Blanchett really sell it out? I'd be going for the writer and director, the actor isn't a factor as to whether it's 'for me' or not.

Yes, Cate Blanchett will sell out. Hugely popular actress, hasn't been on stage over here since 2012.

I know this is a musical but as this is a general NT 2019 thread, what happened to The Witches? Did that just get swept under the carpet?

There's nothing announced for the Olivier beyond Peer Gynt which starts in July, so presumably the Christmas show is yet to be announced. Either The Witches or Count of Monte Christo is my bet!

Actually was The Witches ever officially announced by the National?  I can only find stories from last year which all seem to be based on an article by Baz mentioning it as being "in development".

I did hear last week there were a couple of 'unconfirmeds' being held back...

Anyway, ticking my demographic boxes with a dose of Roger Allam alongside the long-awaited James McArdle thing. Happy days....

(screw Cate, I'll stick with my lads!)

Only a handful of the new productions interest me but I'm not joining the online booking scrum again after being number 4,000+ last time, waiting 1 hour 45 mins for my turn, then finding tix sold out anyway. They used to give warning updates while you were waiting but haven't for ages, so that was a long and anxious wait and for nothing.

Furthermore, the NT did admit recently when I put it to them that, as some here have said, they do hold tix back for subsequent booking periods - but they are not open in telling members this. If they announced this upfront and people still chose to pay for membership (or a higher tier of membership) and try their luck on "their" day, then fine, but keeping quiet about it and leaving people to find out, usually to their disadvantage, is underhand.

Yes - I thought they'd NT Live Mosquitoes - sold out in minutes, national treasure Olivia Colman, would have ben very popular in cinemas, but they didn't.

It's just a bit dull, isn't it? The Bruce Norris sounds great. But a lot of the rest sounds dutiful, especially when you compare it to, say, the Almeida. Amongst classic revivals, the RSC have got there first with Tartufffe and the Almeida with Three Sisters. I might give Peer Gynt a go, as Jonathan Kent can be excellent but it is a tricky one to do. The only one I've seen was a rare Declan Donellan misfire at the National in 1990. Do I remember that Ninagawa's was adjudged a failure too?

The RSC production in 1994/5 with an Olivier award winning Alex Jennings was excellent.

Yes that one was about the best. To add to the other failures mentioned there was a terrible one at the Barbican a few years ago directed by Irina Brook which imagined Peer as a rock star, and before that the notorious utterly shambolic one at the NT directed by Conall Morrison (three actors playing Peer). 

No plié, no entrer.