Hytner's National - a brief retrospective

A little Twittery bird has pointed out that today is Nicholas Hytner's last day at the National Theatre. Although I didn't really start regularly attending the National until 2008, five years into his tenure, I've nonetheless seen a fairly respectable 111 unique National Theatre productions in seven different spaces in the NT complex (and a few outside), and have spent an absolutely incalculable number of hours besides in that lovely great concrete block. I've seen trends come and go - remember how great the Lyttelton was in 2010? And how tippety-top the Cottesloe was in its dying days? - and I've experienced a FULL range of emotions in that building, for better and for worse.

People with more knowledge and eloquence than I have will be producing proper articles about the great things that have been achieved since Hytner took the reins in 2003 so I'm not even going to try. What I have done instead is quickly bash together my top ten NT productions from the Hytner regime. And my bottom five, because I'm a massive proponent of the idea that our theatres should have the freedom to fail. It's always better to be able to take risks that sometimes go horribly wrong than to trundle along respectably but unremarkably, and it's worth celebrating that even if I'm doing so by producing a short list of tedium and rage. The fact I have some productions to actually rank as bottom rather than just "nothing special but okay" is one of the many things I love about the National Theatre.

Friday 5: shows to look forward to (and the men to watch)

There's a lot of interesting-sounding shows coming up for 2011 and my bank balance is already quivering with fear at the sight of them. So this week and next, I'm going to be picking out the ones that have the most interesting casting to me and talking them up a bit.

2010 retrospective - the performers

Having not seen a great deal of musicals, I've decided to lump all actors together into one category, and same for actresses. I'm also not differentiating between performances in lead roles or supporting roles; if someone's amazing, then they're amazing no matter how much they had to do! So instead of shortlisting and categorising and ultimately awarding, I have instead simply listed my top 5 actors and my top 5 actresses this year (with a couple of strays down at the bottom).