National Theatre’s shift from repertory plays risks ‘eroding culture’, says David Hare

David Hare says the National Theatre’s direction towards fewer plays with extended runs is a ‘terrible impoverishment’. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

The National Theatre risks “eroding the culture” by shifting away from its founding principles and putting on “semi-commercial” plays “angling for the West End”, the playwright David Hare has said.

The two-time Olivier award winner described the playhouse’s shift from repertory theatre – a system where a resident acting company performs a rotation of plays – as standing in spite of George Bernard Shaw and Harley Granville-Barker’s vision.