Finance FAQs
What are the National's financial objectives?
Financial performance remains an essential part of an overall assessment of the National's performance, although it is clear that this cannot be seen in isolation from artistic achievements.
Our financial objectives remain to:
1. Invest adequately in productions and performances in order to uphold their variety and distinction
2. Achieve high box office returns
3. Sustain good net ancillary income from catering and the sale of programmes and publications
4. Raise satisfactory amounts of sponsorship and donations
5. Sustain our Arts Council grant in real terms
6. Ensure the future solvency of the company
7. Raise sufficient resources for the capital maintenance of the National.
How much did the theatre cost to build?
Approximately £20m at mid 1970s prices - not a high figure compared to other similar buildings here and abroad - paid by central government, apart from the contribution by the GLC (Greater London Council) of a fixed sum of £5.7m.
How much of the theatre's revenue is subsidy?
Offering the public a wide choice of plays, both modern and classical, given concurrently in repertoire and continually changing, is very expensive. Even with capacity audiences, it is a form of theatre that demands heavy government subsidy.
The subsidy covers less than 40% of the National's total costs (once it covered 60%). The self-earned income is chiefly from the box office and sponsorship, but also from West End transfers, catering, plus other front-of-house services, bookshops, programmes and other publications.
For financial summaries please see the recent Annual reports/reviews
As the GLC provided a proportion of the capital cost, did it play a part in the movement for a national theatre?
Yes. The first big step on the road to the new building came in 1945 when the LCC (London County Council), as it was called at the time, offered a site (later changed). The National Theatre Bill followed four years later, but little progress was made. Pressure by the LCC under the leadership of the late Sir Isaac Hayward culminated in their offer in 1961 to find the sum then needed to meet the balance of the cost. A year later the government set up the South Bank Theatre Board to build the theatre, which stands on a 4.7 acre site provided by the GLC. Until April 1986, when it was disbanded, the GLC gave the National an annual subsidy. The freehold of the site passed to the Arts Council in 1986. In 1996 the National signed a long term lease having been a licensee up to that date.
How many people in all are needed to run the National?
The full-time staff totals about 800 including a company of upwards of 120 actors. Because seven or eight plays are run in the repertoire with each other, actors have the chance to play a variety of parts at the same time. There has been an example of one actor, Warren Clarke, performing in all three theatres on one night and in 1996/97, Colin Stinton appeared on the same night in Guys and Dolls in the Olivier and Death of a Salesman in the Lyttelton while both plays were in repertory. The late Yvonne Bryceland once did twelve performances of four different productions in one week.
It's interesting that when Henry Irving was running the Lyceum Theatre, over a hundred years ago, he employed almost exactly the same total number - but he was operating in one theatre, not three, and for the most part putting plays on singly, not in repertoire which requires many more people.
