Around Town

DIY: in-house workshops mean the National can build sets and props on site (© Simon Annand)

In contrast to the Lyttleton’s familiar set-up, the Cottesloe is an infinitely configurable modern studio space, based loosely on an Elizabethan courtyard theatre, and perfect for traverse (where the audience sits on two sides of the stage) and promenade productions, or any other plays that benefit from an intimate space and a sense of shared experience. It’s the Olivier, though, that is the National’s pride and joy. Seating 1,120, it is based on the classical Greek open-stage model and has a fan of steeply raked seating which stretches to 118 degrees – precisely the extent of an actor’s peripheral vision. Another feature of the theatre – its revolutionary fly tower, which vastly extends the range of what stage designers can do here – is clearly visible from the outside of the building, in another of Lasdun’s deliberate statements about structure and meaning. Feature continues

But there’s one really razzle-dazzle, bums-on-seats, no-business-like-showbusiness thing about the Olivier – its drum revolve. This is a huge circular section in the middle of the stage which goes up and down as well as round and round, thus allowing for spectacular coups de théaâre. ‘We don’t use it in every show,’ Walker admits, ‘because that would just be showing off. But we do think, well, we are the National Theatre – if we’re not going to do it, who is?’

And that’s the real point of the place, surely. Lasdun, Sir Larry and all those earnest social visionaries at the Arts Council put the National there to enhance British theatre and develop its potential, but they didn’t forget that we might also go there to ooh and aah at a bit of downright spectacle. The tour does a brilliant job of explaining how the building facilitates all kinds of creativity without patronising any of its users. When you emerge afterwards into the bright sunshine and the riverside bustle, it’s impossible not to feel quietly proud of the place.