There may be trouble ahead

INTERVIEWA fierce defender of the arts, Sir Peter Hall foresees lean times ahead in this era of cuts. MARK HENNESSY, London Editor, meets the great director near his home in Chelsea

EIGHTY YEARS OLD in November, Sir Peter Hall sits in the sunshine outside the Bluebird on the King’s Road in London, and worries.

“I do hope that I am not being too miserable,” he says. “Until the recession, which none of us saw coming, I thought the theatre was doing pretty well. But it is now really worrying. Everybody has been put on notice of at least a 25 per cent cut in London, and worse in the regions.

“This is very sad and is going to damage years of work. I suppose everybody could say that. Who knows what the effects will be? We shall find out. I am gloomy about it, partly as a reaction to the fact that I was optimistic three years ago. Enormously so,” he says.

In August 1955, then aged under 25 and two years out of Cambridge, Hall was given the script of a play that had been deemed impossible to perform by others who had read it. He thought otherwise, and it made his reputation. The play was Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

“I thought it was beautifully written, very economical; terribly funny in that it used language in an absolutely masterly way and it brought theatre back to where it ought to be: words.

“But they were not fanciful words. They were not pinned on like sequins. They were organic. But I didn’t think that it would do more than a month in a hot August. I thought it was jolly worthwhile, but I didn’t think it would change my life,” he says.

“Fate is funny. Then came another great man, Harold Pinter. And they became great friends, and they didn’t even know each other at the start of all this. They sent each other their scripts and argued about them. Harold is not Sam, and Sam is not Harold, but you have a feeling that neither could be what he was without somewhere in life there was the other.”

Hall is amused by how Beckett is now portrayed as a cultural icon of Ireland, given its attitude to him during his lifetime.

“I’m glad they got there at last. But one of the things you have to understand as an English stage director is that the majority of writing is Irish, from the Elizabethans on. I think it is the Irish absolute love of words which is much more developed and much more saucy than anything you would find in England – even today, and we are a little less inhibited.

“Why does it happen? Celtic blood? I don’t know, but the Irish have always seemed to do things that much earlier than the English.”

Hall founded the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960 when he was 29, and he was director of the National Theatre between 1973 and 1988, succeeding Laurence Olivier. His son Edward now leads the Hampstead Theatre in London.

“He is, I think, one of the best directors in the country and has at last got his own theatre, which I am thrilled about.” But he had to wait until he reached his 40s. “He asks me, ‘What the bloody hell did you do to get that type of life.’ I say, ‘I think I didn’t do anything.’ It was the particular situation we found ourselves in.”

Under New Labour, the arts did receive extra money, but Hall remains dubious about all politicians and their interest in the arts. At best, they enjoy the role of the munificent patron, but one possessed of little understanding.

“I think Labour and the Conservatives are extraordinarily similar and always have been. I have nothing but contempt for either party, I have to say. It is so inhuman, the business of politics,” he says, uncomfortable in the noon-day sunshine. “If you ask any MP how often he goes to the theatre you will get the most astonishing answers. They don’t go for years because they are very busy in the evenings. There is no tradition here of our rulers liking art. The reverse is true.”

Deep cuts are coming, and ticket prices will rise. “I wonder when the situation really bites about what we will be left with. I think we will have what is big and recognised and quite expensive. We shall not have that which is trying to do something different.”

Just one third of theatre’s revenues in the UK come from the box-office, with the rest divided between the state and sponsors. Now, however, state funding will be harder to get and that which is available from business may be tied with even more strings than has been the case up to now – Hall’s view is that businesses are already too influential in the arts.

The danger is not active censorship, as happened during the 1960s in Britain when retired naval officers “of enormous rank” sat in St James’s Palace and pronounced upon the work of Tennessee Williams, Beckett and scores of others. Instead, it will be a language of implied understandings, where directors will seek not to upset sponsors, lest they take fright.

“It has to. We have to get the money from somewhere. I think it is getting more assumed. ‘Nobody needs to be told because we all understand,’ that sort of thing. Very Orwellian,” says Hall, who points to the experience of decades in the US, where sponsorship is the fuel that powers the art scene.

“The consequence of it is that the conductor or the director has to be as good at business and negotiation as he is at putting on a play or conducting a symphony. They are not quite as free in their art as they were. Not surprisingly. I don’t think anyone has ever thought through just how dangerous it is. ‘Don’t stretch the chairman, the president or the board too far, or they will simply not give you any money at all.’ There is definitely a feeling, that is increasingly apt, that the person who pays the piper calls the tune.

“The great thing about the 1950s and 1960s is that a group of us was able to get on with what we thought was the future. And we weren’t patted and told that the first thing we had to do was to cut our budget by 25 per cent,” he says.

Equally, the US experience sees theatre being required to live off the celebrity of actors, as happened with Kevin Spacey’s leadership of the Old Vic. “He was absolutely loathed when he arrived,” says Hall. “It was horrible . . . but he did some horrible work. There is a moment in a theatre’s life when it seems in a curious way to thrive on horrible work.

“It was three years of tough going and all of us being frightfully nice to him. But it has come good, quietly, and largely with every production having a number of Americans. This is all good and fine, but we have got to do the same over there. He’s a wonderful actor. I can’t imagine what he is doing here.”

After more than 60 years in theatre, Hall has no desire to retire. He is directing a production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals in September and directing his daughter Rebecca Hall in Twelfth Night in January.

“I have worked with her 10 times. It’s Twelfth Night. Hardly revolutionary. But she was born to play Viola, so that’s the only reason for doing it. It is a wonderful play,” he says.

“Am I a workaholic? Whatever that is, I’m it. Most people don’t have that good fortune. They pass the time by earning a bit of money,” he says, laughing. “I would rather go and do a rehearsal than do anything else. I am glad to listen to a record or read a book with a little less guilt than in the past – that’s good – but it soon palls. I would sooner work.”

LIFE OF A DRAMA KING

Born in 1930, he rejoices in the name Peter Reginald Frederick Hall.

Legacy:Founded the Royal Shakespeare Company, followed Laurence Olivier as director of the National Theatre, and directed the first English language production of Waiting for Godot.

Personal life:He married four times, first to French actress Leslie Caron (two children), Jacqueline Taylor (two children including the director Edward Hall), opera soprano Maria Ewing (one child, the actor Rebecca Hall) and his present wife Nikki Frei (one child).

Soon appearing at an arts festival near you:In conversation with the Guardian's theatre critic Michael Billington at the Galway Arts Festival in the Town Hall Theatre on July 24th at 4pm. See galwayartsfestival.com for details