NT Trials Sundays in Autumn 2008, £10 Tix RemainDate: 2 October 2007
Retracting his earlier warning that, due to inflationary rises, 2007 may be the last year for the National Theatre’s hugely popular Travelex Season in its current form (See News, 15 Feb 2007), NT artistic director Nicholas Hytner (pictured) today committed to continuing the scheme, at the same price point, for the foreseeable future.
Sponsor Travelex has signed up for its sixth consecutive annual season, which will open in the NT Olivier in spring 2008 with Hytner’s own new production of George Bernard Shaw’s 1905 classic Major Barbara (which follows this year’s Travelex presentation of Shaw’s Saint Joan).
Launched in 2003, in its inaugural year the Travelex £10 Season, in which two-thirds of the seats in the South Bank complex’s largest auditorium are reduced to just £10 (with others at £27.50) for six months of the year, was named the Theatre Event of the Year in the Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers’ Choice Awards (See News, 3 Feb 2004). Its success has been credited with attracting a much broader, younger audience and achieving unprecedented attendance figures at the National.
At a press briefing this afternoon to launch the National Theatre’s 2006-7 Annual Report (See Today’s Other News for programming announcements), Hytner admitted that he had changed his mind about the ongoing viability of the ticket scheme: “It feels that it’s working so well. It’s too good a thing to turn our back on.”
Sunday openings, More Connections
Speaking to Whatsontage.com at today’s press event, NT executive director Nick Starr laid out the theatre’s long-anticipated plans for introducing Sunday openings, previously expected to launch this year. A three- to four-month trial is now scheduled for autumn 2008 as a pre-cursor to full-scale adoption of a seven-day-a-week schedule later in 2009.
Depending on repertory schedules, Sunday afternoon matinees will be held in the NT’s two larger auditoria, the 1,100-seat Olivier and the 900-seat Lyttelton (the 400-seat Cottesloe, which has its own separate entrance around the corner from the main complex, will be exempt). NT bars and restaurants will also open from mid-day so that theatregoers can dine before and after their performances.
Starr estimates that an additional £250,000 to £300,000 per annum is required to sustain Sunday openings, which though “not a huge earner”, are considered a necessary risk to meet the entertainment expectations of modern audiences.
The NT also today announced a new partnership with Bank of America, which takes over from Shell as the sponsor of Connections, the NT’s nationwide new writing programme for young people, which, now in its tenth cycle, will be relaunched as “New Connections”. Bank of America’s £325,000 grant will run for an initial two-year period.
The National’s 2006-7 Annual Report shows that attendances across the financial year, ending on 30 March 2007, remained on a par with last year with 722,000 paid attendances taking houses to 85% of capacity - compared to 84% in 2005-6 and the all-time high of 94% in 2004-5 (the double-whammy year of The History Boys and His Dark Materials).
Financially, turnover for the year increased to £46 million, and the NT achieved a surplus of £187,000 against a budgeted break-even result. This with a designation of £2.4 million for capital expenditure against a budgeted provision of £1.5 million takes the theatre’s unrestricted reserves to £900,000. “The results are what they’re supposed to be,” said Hytner. “We try more or less to break even.”
During the 2006/2007 financial year, the National mounted 24 productions (19 of them new), had three productions touring the UK for 28 weeks, had two productions transfer to Broadway (care of Boyett Ostar Productions and its first-look arrangement) and acted as its own West End producer for the first time (with The History Boys, returning this December to Wyndham’s). In total, 1.1 million people saw stage performances given by the NT during the year.
The Annual Report is available to download from the National Theatre website.
- by Terri Paddock
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