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Nonfiction

Dramatic Reading: A Memoir by the Director of ‘The History Boys’

A scene from Nicholas Hytner’s production of “One Man, Two Guvnors,” with James Corden, center.Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

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BALANCING ACTS
Behind the Scenes at London’s National Theatre
By Nicholas Hytner
312 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $28.95

In his new memoir, Nicholas Hytner, the former artistic director of the National Theater in London, recalls the organization’s 50th-anniversary celebration in 2013. Included in an evening of highlights was Alan Bennett’s hit play “The History Boys,” which Hytner had directed there to great acclaim. Richard Griffiths, the gifted actor who played a teacher to those boys, died earlier that year, so Bennett played the role instead. “He didn’t efface memories of Richard,” Hytner writes, “but he landed an enormous laugh that Richard never got, because 10 years previously, neither Richard nor I had understood the line properly.”

“It used to drive me mad,” Bennett observed.

“Why on earth didn’t you tell me?” Hytner responded.

For the pre-existing condition of British opacity, there really is no cure.

It is this issue of engagement, and its absence, that bedevils too many stretches of “Balancing Acts: Behind the Scenes at London’s National Theatre.” Hytner held his post there for 12 years (2003 to 2015), producing up to 20 plays annually, directing 26 himself. Let’s be clear: Hytner is indisputably one of the best theater directors in the world. He read English at Cambridge, and his approach to Shakespeare and the classics is compelling and nuanced (his 2010 “Hamlet” at the National with Rory Kinnear was an emotionally riveting high in a lifetime of watching that play). His grasp of low comedy is equally impressive — with the playwright Richard Bean, Hytner reconceptualized Goldoni’s 1746 comedy, “The Servant of Two Masters,” as “One Man, Two Guvnors,” a star vehicle for a dazzling James Corden set in 1960s Brighton, incorporating slapstick, farce and a skiffle band. He’s no slouch either when it comes to musicals; his 1991 revival of “Carousel” at the National moved to Lincoln Center Theater, where he won a Tony for best direction and the show won for best musical revival. And his 1989 production of “Miss Saigon” ran for a decade, both in the West End and on Broadway.

At the National’s three stages, at least half the plays Hytner produced each season were new plays. These included commissions on topical issues like politics and the media, since he had decided the National “should examine the constituent parts of its title, and explore both the state of the nation and the boundaries of the theater.” He revitalized his audience by persuading Travelex to sponsor a £10 ticket; more than 30 percent of that audience had never gone to the National before.

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Hytner was knighted for his service to drama in 2010, no small accomplishment for a gay, Jewish boy from Didsbury, a middle-class suburb of Manchester. It’s the writing about it that seems to give him pause. After a lively introduction, he falls into a dutiful slog of sausage making, devoting long sections to plot summaries and production details that are dead on arrival. A master showman making the mistake of telling rather than showing should have been avoidable — is there an editor in the house? — along with passages like this: “No playwright insists more eloquently that the arts should not be the exclusive property of a privileged elite than Lee Hall, so when ‘The Pitmen Painters’ opened at Live Theater, Newcastle upon Tyne, in 2008, I hurried up to see it.”

Once Hytner focuses on his relationship with Bennett, we move to higher, more solid ground, though there are still lapses, most in the name of Shakespeare. But don’t blame him, let’s look at the real point: Hytner abdicates his responsibilities as a reporter whenever the news is less than laudatory. He is a genius at taking himself down but is loath to cast that gimlet eye elsewhere. Early in his tenure, he produces “His Girl Friday,” with Jack O’Brien directing. In the cast was Margaret Tyzack, “a legend of the London stage,” he recounts. “‘I love Jack O’Brien,’ she said. ‘No nonsense. He tells you where to stand, when to move, where the laughs are. It’s such a relief. I haven’t worked with a director like him for decades.’ She seemed so happy that I thought I wouldn’t remind her how recently she’d worked with me.”

Gold. But then we get: “Omertà prevents me from naming the guilty directors of some fine plays that barely survived their ministrations.” Really? I wondered if he misunderstood the assignment, but of course he’s smarter than that. The publication of this memoir coincides with the opening of the Bridge Theater, Hytner’s next act, a for-profit mini-version of the National where he will run the place and actually get paid for it without having to raise public tuppence. He has programmed a new season jammed with name talent that kicked off last month with him directing Rory Kinnear in “Young Marx,” a new play by Richard Bean. So all comment is considered here, since going forward, everyone remains a chess piece.

The good news is that in its last third, “Balancing Acts” loses some balance when Hytner locates his narrative nerve. After producing blockbuster hits like “The History Boys,” “War Horse” and “One Man, Two Guvnors,” he learns how to monetize his nonprofit enterprise much as Joe Papp, the artistic director of the Public Theater, did with “A Chorus Line” in the 1970s. Hytner starts telling stories, writing fully realized scenes that are funny and immediate and ring true. Among them is an account of Danny Boyle directing “Frankenstein,” each day welcoming Hytner’s insistent notes while executing none of them. And Hytner delivers a priceless rendition of his own hysterical outburst as the opening of “One Man, Two Guvnors” looms. During a run-through, as the understudies laugh eagerly at every last bit, he yells: “Stop laughing! Nobody’s allowed to laugh anymore! I’m the arbiter of funny! I get to decide!”

Where was this delectable creature 200 pages ago? Finally, he engages.

Throughout the book, Hytner takes pains, periodically, to explain his natural reticence. Posner, a character in “The History Boys,” speaks to him, he writes. Posner is described by his teacher this way: “A sense of not sharing, of being out of it. … A holding back. Not being in the swim.” Hytner adds, “And no matter how gregarious my job, this always cuts me to the quick.” Of “Carousel” he writes: “I’ve never heard such unrestrained sobbing in a theater. … A thousand people every night told me I wasn’t alone in devoting too much of my life to emotional self-defense.”

That is the comfort and community of the theater, certainly, but theater is not separate from life. You can’t see it or make it — or write about it — in a vacuum. No one is more protected in the wings than in a spotlight, however it looks. The triumphant curtain call to a standing ovation and vomiting with fright in your dressing room are two parts of a whole. Hytner writes of his friendship with the director Sam Mendes: “We often take in a show together like a couple of old matinee ladies, then gossip over dinner about who’s up and who’s down in the London theater.”

That sounds delightful. Next time you convene, book a larger table. And take us with you.

Alex Witchel writes for The Washington Post and Vanity Fair. Her most recent book is “All Gone: A Memoir of My Mother’s Dementia. With Refreshments.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Page 19 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Dramatic Reading. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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