A bland and baleful stoic

‘Woke up this morning feeling fine. Notices for Lorca’s comedy, Jack’s the Lad, terrific (even from that goof on the Times). Rehearsals for the new Arnold Wesker a real gas. Long lunch with Aimé Planchon (hot French bombshell); short siesta; drinks party at NT for all of us with CBEs … rest of evening a bit of a blur.’

April Fool. National Service, Richard Eyre’s diary of his ten years (1987-97) at the helm of the bunker on the South Bank, reads like Penal Servitude. What a chronicle of woes, crises and wariness, of ‘panic, insecurity and inadequacy’. The mystery is why Eyre, in his father’s phrase, chose to ‘nail his balls to the wall’.

Here are a few tasters: ‘I’m not sure I like the theatre enough to act as its propagandist and evangelist. I don’t love it’; ‘I’m worried about my fear of becoming bored, of my questionable commitment to theatre, and of my doubtful endurance’; ‘Have I been neutered by the NT?’ At a party a girl from the wigs department says to him, ‘You don’t know who I am and I’ve been here for 18 months.’ ‘I wanted to say I’ve been here 18 months and I don’t know who I am.’ Prozac time.

‘It’s the sheer size of the NT — three plays in three auditoriums, and another nine productions being planned … I seem to have an infinity of meetings.’ Running the National Theatre may be no picnic, but at least try and have a good time.

Eyre’s predecessor Peter Hall, according to Max Rayne, his chairman, wanted to be one of the boys but ‘he can’t wear the blue jeans’. Eyre, assuredly a better director than Hall and no puffed-up politician, sniffed anarchy in the air (‘The climate is dark and savage, and we should respond to that …’) Trouble was he’s not an anarchist but a baleful stoic.