National Theatre All Season Announcements

Well there was that production of The Seagull with Kristin Scott Thomas that transferred to New York, that was one of their biggest hits. I wonder when the idea gained currency that the Royal Court should do exclusively new plays ? It was never the case up until about the past decade or so. 

My favourite, Wish List, has already had several new productions since its debut 3 years ago. Another Bruntwood winner, Yen, went to the US, and My Mum's A Tw*t has just had a new run in Edinburgh. 

I am not saying that the new writing at the Royal Court is in any way a bad strategy for them or anything less than laudable.

I am genuinely interesting to know what percentage of their new writing has a life beyond the initial run. Yes, there are some stand out hits and some that do go on to find a home in the professional and amateur realms - but what is the 'success rate'? (Which does assume that success means entering the repertoire to a certain extent - so that new writing becomes established writing - which may not be everyone's view of what makes a successful new play)

Yeah, that seems reasonable. Id add stuff like Cyrpus avenue being on BBC iplayer is great!

Why so defensive ? All I’m asking is when they changed their policy to do exclusively new plays because it never used to be that. Even in their heyday Paul Scofield did Uncle Vanya there.

Thank you all for your help.

Another quick question, and probably a dumb one but hey ho. I have a theatre voucher, can the box office add this as a credit to the account so I then have it to pay with on thursday over the phone? In readiness for me then using on thursday morning.

I'm thinking probably not but thought I'd ask the theatrical equivalent of Delphi in case.

Doh, yes meant to say theatre tokens. Sounds like a good plan, thank you!

Excellent! Glad it worked out - had no idea if they would do it or not but I guess from their point of view they've locked you in to using the tokens at the National so why not!

Well after that delightful riposte, all I would say was that the vast majority of authors would want to see their plays have a life beyond an initial production. Sure there are some pieces that are very much 'of the moment' but seeing your work performed by different casts, interpreted by different directors, designers, creatives is surely something worth striving for. It does not mean that one-off plays are bad or that success is only measured in purely financial or repeat performance terms.

I raised the issue simply because I had no real sense of how many RC plays did go on to have life beyond the first production.

Relatively painless this morning, a low queue number, plenty of cheap seats available, managed to get all four on my preferred dates and seats and all for a similar price as one mid-range ticket for the West End shows which went on sale over the last week.

That was disturbingly easy. Two browsers open, 1500+ people ahead of me in the queue in Firefox, just 12 people ahead of me in the queue in Edge, got exactly what I wanted for The Visit and The Seven Streams of the River Ota and the whole process took under ten minutes.