Rufus Norris’s announced departure from the National Theatre last week sounds the starting gun for its own succession drama: who is in line for the biggest job in UK theatre? Will the NT reach for a safe pair of hands at a time when arts funding is squeezed and theatre is clawing back revenue lost over the pandemic? Or will it continue Norris’s project of opening up the venue to new audiences and daring to be different? The theatre may well follow the trend for appointing co-directors rather than a single figurehead, to balance risk with tradition. Several high-profile artistic directors have recently left their jobs so there is a lot of talent in the system. Here is the Guardian’s shortlist of potential contenders:
1. Indhu Rubasingham
The favourite by a long shot, Rubasingham has all the flair, leadership and creativity for the job and the confidence to take the NT to new places. Artistic director at the Kiln theatre for a decade and the first woman of colour to run a major London theatre, she faced down heavy criticism for changing the theatre’s name (who cares now that it used to be called the Tricycle?) and led with programming that was full of fire. Rubasingham announced her departure from the Kiln two weeks before Norris. Significant timing?
2. Clint Dyer
Appointed the NT’s deputy artistic director in 2021, Dyer is still fairly new in the job but has decades of experience as an actor, writer and director, and has certainly made his presence felt at the NT: programming has become more daring under his tenure with new and challenging work to balance against the canon, with a third instalment of his own acclaimed series, Death of England, in collaboration with Roy Williams, coming this September. Whoever is given the top job may well share it with Dyer.
3. Rupert Goold
Goold is without doubt one of the most successful theatre-makers of our time. A prolific director across screen and stage, he has made a real splash as artistic director of the Almeida theatre. His programming has heft but a starry quality, too: he has pulled in some of the biggest names in film, including Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal, and zeitgeisty directors and writers (Rebecca Frecknall, James Graham). If there is pressure on post-pandemic theatre to bring in the A-listers, Goold is the NT’s main man.
4. Lynette Linton
A dynamo of an artistic director at the Bush theatre, it has become a far more exciting venue since she took over in 2019, with small but mighty productions such as Red Pitch and this year’s Olivier award-winning The P Word. Born in 1990, her youth works in her favour: she would bring freshness and fearlessness. Linton has proved herself a director of a high calibre, too, taking Lynn Nottage’s Sweat from the Donmar Warehouse to the West End in 2019 to award-winning acclaim. She has all the energy and passion to take the NT into uncharted waters.
5. Robert Hastie
The artistic director of Sheffield theatres since 2016, Hastie has taken the venue to new heights, championing local talent and recently scoring a big win with storming Sheffield-based musical, Standing at the Sky’s Edge, which twinned veteran musician Richard Hawley with fantastic young writer Chris Bush. The show was named best musical at this year’s Olivier awards, so he is high on the industry’s radar. Currently directing the West End run of Operation Mincemeat, he is outside the London bubble and would bring a different perspective to the NT.
6. Rachel O’Riordan
An impressive artistic director who has earned her place at the helm of the Lyric Hammersmith, she is of Irish heritage and has been an artistic director in Scotland and Wales. She knows how to fill a big-seater venues, too, and has produced some big hits including her super-successful production of Gary Owen’s Iphigenia in Splott, which has toured the nation. O’Riordan is immersed in metropolitan theatre-making but has a vision way beyond London.
7. Sam Mendes
Long ago at the helm of the Donmar Warehouse and back making theatre now via stratospheric Hollywood success, would Mendes return to stage work on a full-time basis? He is showing some signs of this, having recently directed a revival of The Lehman Trilogy for the West End, and filling out the auditorium with Jack Thorne’s The Motive and the Cue at the NT. He is classic, old-school NT fare: highly accomplished as a programmer and polished as a director, he would be a starry appointment with the mother of all contacts books – but would he be willing to push the envelope?
8. Jamie Lloyd
Finally a wildcard: gloriously unpredictable, undoubtedly a rare talent from a working-class background, Lloyd is one of Britain’s powerhouse directors who combines an avant-garde vision with commercial acumen. His tenure would never be boring: he knows how to turn the canon on its head in the most divisive of ways (think Cyrano de Bergerac starring James McAvoy or his recent West End take on The Seagull). Currently dazzling Broadway with A Doll’s House starring Jessica Chastain, this appointment might be out of the NT’s reach, although he is set to direct Lucy Prebble’s play, The Effect, at the NT this August.
