The walls of the Royal National Theatre, in London, are made from thick slabs of grey concrete; slabs so thick, indeed, that no secrets are escaping through them. The few staff who know the identities of the candidates lining up to replace Trevor Nunn as its director are remaining silent. The theatre won't even officially admit that a selection process is under way. Imminently, however, a handful of Britain's most talented theatre practitioners will be grilled by the 13-strong management board about their qualifications to run what is arguably the most important arts organisation in Britain.
In its 40-year history, the theatre has had just four directors: its founder, Laurence Olivier; Peter Hall; Richard Eyre and, since 1997, Nunn. While Nunn's time in charge has produced a string of exciting new work, including Maxim Gorky's Summerfolk and Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, many feel the theatre has lost its sense of direction.
"The National is not making enough of an argument for theatre," says Susannah Clapp, the Observer's theatre critic. "Nunn has given us some of the best productions of recent years, but there's been a screaming deficiency of really good new work: new writing, new directors, less conventional theatrical forms."
Perhaps not surprisingly for a man who became a millionaire after directing Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, Nunn has brought big-scale musicals - Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady and, this Christmas, South Pacific - to the National. That they have all been money-spinners has led to inevitable accusations of commercialism, an illustration of how sensitive the job is.
Whoever takes it on will have to be a political animal and an impressive spokesperson for the arts. He or she will also have to be an impresario capable of running three auditoriums and, ideally, a fine director as well. So who are the contenders? There is no shortage of speculation in theatre circles.
Until recently, Stephen Daldry seemed to be the favourite. "He would have been the one to stimulate the company and galvanise press and public," says Clapp. Daldry boasts an impeccable CV, having run the Royal Court, with its reputation for new writing, and enjoyed huge success in the commercial world. His production of J.B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls reopens next week, having been an almost permanent presence in the West End for not far short of a decade.
It seems Daldry has ruled himself out, however. There have been mutterings of a breakdown in communication between the director and the board of the National, although, having scored a huge success with his film, Billy Elliot, it may be that he wants time to develop his cinema career.
Another former director of the Royal Court, Max Stafford-Clark, who has a great reputation for finding new playwrights, has been touted as a candidate, as has John Caird, one of Nunn's regular collaborators. Howard Davies, who won several big awards for The Iceman Cometh, at the Almeida, is another.
But it seems likely that the final stage of the selection process will be a two-horse race between Jude Kelly, of West Yorkshire Playhouse, and Nicholas Hytner, the acclaimed freelance director. Michael Billington, the theatre critic of the Guardian, suggests there is no obvious winner. "Hytner is a first-rate director but has never run a theatre. Kelly has created an outstanding theatre in Leeds, but she's really not an A-list director."
"The national theatre of the north" is the sobriquet often applied to Kelly's Yorkshire power base. She has managed to attract the likes of Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart to join the company for extended periods and has run a highly successful outreach programme, working particularly with Leed's ethnic-minority communities. She is also a fine communicator, at home on television discussing anything from modern theatre to the problems of Britain's inner cities.
Hytner is a shy man, by contrast, at ease only when working with performers. His advantage over Kelly is his clear brilliance as a director. He turned Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III into an Oscar-winning film and has staged the musicals Carousel and Miss Saigon. His theatre productions include an oft-revived Wind In The Willows and an acclaimed Measure For Measure. Last week saw the opening at the National of his most recent work, Mark Ravenhill's Mother Clap's Molly House, which Michael Coveney, the Daily Mail's theatre critic, regards as Hytner's statement of intent for the job. The work, which includes a gay orgy, is a radical piece for the theatre, "a great fillip for the whole fringe of the last decade", according to Coveney. Just as Nunn's musicals have brought a new family audience to the theatre, so Ravenhill and Hytner have attracted an even more important young audience to step over the National's threshold.
What may tip the balance in favour of either is their skill at attracting other artists to join them. Michael Grandage and Matthew Warchus are among the generation of new directors who should be working there, and more established names need to be wooed back as well. Declan Donnellan and Deborah Warner haven't worked at all at the National under Nunn.
Then there is the matter of Ian McDiarmid and Jonathan Kent, directors of the Almeida. When they announced their joint resignation last week, rumour spread at breakneck speed that they were going for the National job. They subsequently denied any interest, asking why they'd be interested in running what they referred to as an institution. Nonetheless, the new director will surely want them on board in some capacity.
The ultimate decision will rest with the dozen members of the theatre's board, under Christopher Hogg, its chairman. By a strange coincidence, Hogg, who is also the chairman of the information group Reuters, is also in charge of the appointment process for another key British establishment job, that of the chairmanship of the BBC. With his National hat on, he chairs a board that is heavy with businessmen but light on artists: the playwright Tom Stoppard and the West End producer Andre Ptaszynski are the only members who earn their living from theatre.
According to Tom Morris, director of the Battersea Arts Centre, the sad thing is that the job is seen more as a burden than as the pinnacle of a career. "The role of the National at the moment is surely to be at the vanguard of exploring the future of theatre," he says. "I have to say, it's hard to feel confident that any of these are the right people. The worry is that it will be a conservative appointment, and as a result things will gently collapse, like a deflated soufflΘ."
The decision will probably be known in a couple of weeks. Michael Coveney tips Hytner, but Michael Billington isn't so sure. "While Hytner commands a lot of loyalty," he says, "my hunch is that Jude Kelly will get it. The job demands so much political awareness now. In the current climate, I can't help thinking it's less likely to go to a middle-class Oxbridge-educated male than to a dynamic, persuasive female."
