What was radical at the National is becoming normal

David Oyelowo’s Coriolanus opened at the National Theatre this week on the day outgoing artistic director Rufus Norris announced his final season. The production is an appropriate fanfare. Oyelowo’s muscular performance – both literally and metaphorically – does nothing to provoke sympathy for the elitist Roman general who despises the population of his city so much that he makes common cause with his worst enemy. Fundamentally an idiot, Coriolanus dies for his belief in class superiority, with race and nation mere toys of the nobility. Lyndsey Turner’s diverse cast quietly underlines this, and its diversity is reflected in the audience. One of Norris’s achievements has been to open up the National beyond its older, whiter crowd. His success has been incremental. In 2021-22, 11 per cent of the audience was non-white; the UK theatre average was 7 per cent. So far this year, the National Theatre has seen its non-white audience grow to 14 per cent.

Norris announced a suitably eclectic conclusion, which will include Juliet Stevenson in David Lan’s The Land of the Living, Lynette Linton directing Arinzé Kene and Cherrelle Skeete in Alterations, and Rosamund Pike in Suzie Miller’s Inter Alia.

This sort of blend once seemed radical.

When Norris took up the role in 2015, the artistic directors of the UK’s major producing theatres were all white and 60 per cent were men.

His replacement, Indhu Rubasingham, will be the first woman and the first non-white director to oversee the nation’s stage, and she is in good company as change sweeps through British theatre.

Nadia Hall will soon replace Kwame Kwei-Armah at the Young Vic. Nancy Medina is in her first season at the Bristol Old Vic. Nathan Powell has just arrived at the Liverpool Everyman. Norris may not be responsible for this gentle revolution, but he has played a leading role.

The National was founded in 1963 as the nation’s stage, concentrating on Shakespeare and Strindberg.

Othello was the third play performed there in 1964 – with Laurence Olivier playing the lead in blackface. It wasn’t until 1978 that Julia Pascal became the first woman to direct a play there.

Under Norris, productions like the Barber Shop Chronicles, The Father and the Assassin and Dear England reflected the nation rather than inflicting itself on it.

And, to top it off, Norris’s deputy, Clint Dyer, became the first Black director to helm a production of Othello at a major UK theatre with his 2022 National Theatre production. About time.