The role of the English manager has been called 'the impossible task'. There is the weight of expectation, of guiding the hopes of a nation. Get one big decision wrong or luck will turn against you and the newspapers, the fans and the public will turn against you.
I'm thinking about this this week for two reasons: one, that I saw for the second time James Graham's fantastic play, Dear England, about current England football manager Gareth Southgate and how he left his mark on the job, through the culture of the England team from within, first bringing the players with them and then the whole country.
It has been transferred from the National Theater to the West End and, my God, it is good. So fun, so smart, so cheerful, quite educational if you know nothing about football, and the crowd is full of boys, which means NO QUEUE for the ladies at half time.
And secondly, that - hurray - Indhu Rubasingham, director of the Kiln Theater in Kilburn, has been appointed to succeed Rufus Norris as boss of the National Theater. Which, as Nick Clark, co-host of my Standard Theater Podcast, pointed out, is basically the theater equivalent of the impossible task - it's the pinnacle, setting the agenda for the nation, all eyes on you, every decision is singled out and questioned. If you do it wrong, the blades are out.
But Rubasingham has the quality to put her own stamp on this most difficult task and her appointment was met with universal enthusiasm across the sector. "Sometimes really good things happen and the job goes to absolutely the right person," says commentator David Benedict. "While the rest of the world seems to be making all the wrong decisions, the National Theater has made a perfect decision," said critic Arifa Akbar.
Tributes poured in from across the board, praising Rubasingham's mentorship, her collaborative approach, her nurturing of creativity and her championing of new writing. She brings with her a number of firsts - being only the seventh Artistic Director appointed since the theater was founded by Sir Laurence Olivier in 1962, she is the first woman in the position and the first person of colour; she is also one of the few not to have been educated at Cambridge (Olivier and Norris both went to drama school), having graduated from Hull.
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She also has her fair share of controversies under her belt, which will help with the brickbats when they inevitably arrive. There was a lot of fuss about changing the name of her theater from Tricycle (which sounds like a children's theater) to The Kiln. She rode it out, oversaw a beautiful capital project, improved virtually everything about the building, and it was declared a great success.
Then there was the 2014 episode in which Rubasingham announced that she and the board had made the decision not to host the Jewish Film Festival while it was receiving funding from the Israeli embassy, due to the conflict in Gaza (the theater offered alternative funding, but the festival refused to end the relationship). It caused a huge backlash; again she rode it out and emerged unscathed.
She will enter the brutalist building on the South Bank in 2025 (after about a year of skulking on the sidelines as Norris enters his final run), with the roar of the hopeful crowd in her ears.
But man, it'll be hard. Do you remember what it was like for Norris, those first few - actually quite a few - years? In fact, a huge number of brilliant shows (Everyman with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Angels in America with Andrew Garfield, Small Island, The Lehman Trilogy, Network, Amadeus, The Deep Blue Sea with the incomparable Helen McCrory, Natasha Gordon's Nine Night, Lorraine Hansberry's Les Blancs ) was overshadowed for commentators by a patchy series of duds that stood out like a sore thumb.
Saint George and the Dragon was one of the worst plays I have ever seen (my mother flatly refused to go back in after the interval); there was that awful Macbeth with Anne-Marie Duff and Rory Kinnear, two excellent actors lost in a production that begged the question why two Scottish aristocrats were living in a taxi office; A light that shone in Buckinghamshire was endless; Hex was terrible and we will draw a veil over wonderland and never talk about it again. It made people wonder out loud why he got the job.
Then there was Covid, you know. But The Stage Awards have just named the National as one of their nominees for Theater of the Year, after a stellar twelve months that included The Motive and the Cue, Dear England, the completion of Roy Williams and Clint Dyer's Death of England Trilogy and a great adaptation of The Witches that I think could be a Matilda. It shows that people need to settle down and possibly get over themselves. And the rest of us need to get over ourselves, too.
And it means this is a hugely exciting time for Rubasingham to take over. Unlike Southgate, she does not have to bring about a culture change from the start. Norris has started that work for her - not always consistently, like when he bungled a 2019 program announcement by not having women ready to work in it - but he has worked tirelessly to improve diversity in the building, starting from the start setting goals. the start of his reign, which saw Clint Dyer appointed as deputy artistic director, the first black British artist to write, direct and act at the National Theater and (shockingly) the first black director of Othello (another fantastic production).
And he has taken steps to make the National more, well, national, by cultivating co-production relationships with regional theaters so that its work is seen more widely, and bringing London's support to struggling organizations across the UK.
But the National is also having a hard time. Income rose 40 percent last year, but it is still not at pre-pandemic levels. The £19.7 million loan the theater took out from the Culture Recovery Fund in 2020 will have to be repaid in 2025, just as Rubasingham takes over.
She is expected to come up with a great first season, to nurture the country's literary tradition (as she did with her Kiln commission of Zadie Smith's The Wife of Willesden, an adaptation of Chaucer's The Wife of Bath), and that she embraces new work. (again, very much in her wheelhouse), embrace the regions, embrace diversity, all with money - all cash.
It's quite a job. But an impossible one? If anyone has it, Rubasingham has what it takes.
What the Culture Editor did this week
Rubens and Women, Dulwich Picture Gallery
Even if you think you don't really like Rubens, this beautiful exhibition is a small revelation. It paints a picture of a man who, rather than merely fetishizing them (as his large paintings full of opulent nudes might suggest), revered and respected women, from his mother to his powerful female patrons and his two intelligent wives, and a was a man who revered and respected women. are great at capturing their complex personalities. Well worth a visit.
Infinite Life, National Theater
If you want high stakes and fast action, this isn't the show for you. But Annie Baker's funny, understated new play, about a group of women (and one guy) who visit a clinic for chronic pain, is a richly layered portrait of the dynamics between women, and what it's like to live with a condition that is simply not possible. be fully understood by your loved ones. The performances are great, and it doesn't overstay its welcome.
