National Theatre

Denys Lasdun and Peter Hall talk about the building

Building Vistas/1 A condensed version of a talk between Denys Lasdun, the architect of the National Theatre, and Peter Hall, its director, televised on Aquarius on 29 February 1976. (Image of Denys Lasdun and Peter Hall from the programme Aquarius - Designs On The National broadcast on London Weekend.)

PH:		Denys lets begin at the beginning. Describe your building.
DL:		Well, I'll try. To begin with, it stands on the South Bank of the Thames, next to Waterloo Bridge and opposite Somerset House. And it's a point in the river called King's Reach, which turns through almost 90 degrees and picks up a panorama of the City of London that stretches from St. Paul's round to Somerset House and on to Hawksmoor's towers at Westminster Abbey. It's a magical position, probably the most beautiful site in London. The two main theatres are signaled on the outside by two large blank concrete fly-towers. The bigger one, the Olivier, is inflected at an angle towards Waterloo Bridge and the smaller one, the Lyttelton, acts as a sort of point of stasis and is pretty well touching the bridge. The two towers are then tied as it were by a series of terraces, which step down towards the river, and symbolically and physically connect to the bridge. I call these terraces, which are very horizontal in emphasis, “strata” – it's a geological term that rather goes with concrete – and these strata are available to the public to just mill around in. They furthermore penetrate into the building. This is entirely made up in a pyramidal form of the fly-towers, the terraces, and the riverfront, and between these terraces is glass, so from the outside the people can be seen processing through the frame of the building.
PH:		And the fly-towers, the facility for hanging the scenery – that is the most basic form of theatre as we know it, but its usually disguised, or not seen.
DL:		Yes. Nothing in the theatre has been disguised – it is what it is. And in a way this brings one to concrete, because a lot of people question the use of it.
PH:		I think a lot of people wish the theatre could be stone faced like Waterloo Bridge.
DL:		Well the form I have described – particularly the big terraces and the apertures through which you can see the whole life of the building - is one that can only be made physically in reinforced concrete.
PH:		Why?
DL:		There are immense cantilevers which act to give a certain amount of shade from glare for people within the theatre. This is a form you can't do in steel or stone. The building has to be very dense, because we are protecting the word from outside noises. The auditoria have to be embedded in a solid structure, and we can't afford stone – so concrete is the natural material. It's a very intractable material, but it can be a very beautiful material if it is used the way that its own nature intends it to be used. [The building is] asymmetrical, and it has its own dynamic. It is a sort of sculptural form that you can only do with reinforced concrete, but you need to work at a certain scale for this to come off.

PH:		It looks very beautiful in the sun and less beautiful when it rains. What's it going to look like in twenty years' time?
DL:		Well, its going to weather. It's going to streak, and the streaks are going to have white patches, which they're already getting and which I think will be beautiful – don't forget that stone streaks. I want the concrete to weather so that in the end lichen grows on it and it becomes part of the riverscape. It will weather and become as though its and extension of the riverbanks. There's one other aspect of concrete which is partly architectural, partly to do with the nature of theatre. I don't want anything to come between people experiencing the theatre and your drama. It must be space, walls, light. And the ornaments of the building are people moving around – they are a moving ornament in a big bare space that is beautifully lit and carpeted. It is the minimum. It is protected space and nothing else, with God's good light and sometimes electric light as well. But the rhythm of the building is interesting, given that it's also by the river. Because I want the feeling that the audience -like the tides of the river flow into the auditoria and become a community within them. Then the tide ebbs and they come out into the creeks of the small spaces that are made by all these terraces; because they're not vast terraces they are very small, human little places for people to go to.
PH:		The whole building is concerned with right angles, isn't it - in its design?
DL:		There's a great similarity between the Olivier Theatre and the bend of the river. But this angularity which you talk about takes me back to when we were all working together on the building committee. I really didn't know what to make of this problem of the National Theatre and I said to George [Devine, founder of the Royal Court] “Tell me what tomorrow's theatre is about. What is the dynamic of the second half of the 20th century?” And he talked marvelously – about how he explained the theatre to children, about dance, about air between the audiences. It was all what he called rather high-falluting stuff, but he ended-up by saying, “You see there's a certain angularity about the situation – you must keep that.” And these words I found very inspiring. I didn't understand them at the time, but if anybody asked me why there is a jaggy ceiling in the Olivier, or why there is counterpoint against the curve, it would come back to angularity, to George Devine.
PH:		How does it [the National Theatre] happen to be as it is?
DL:		Well, this was an extraordinary two-year period in which Lawrence Olivier drew to himself the spectrum of theatre opinion. We met every month. After listening to everybody for six months of the two years, I suddenly did a drawing. I said, “Really what you're all asking for is a room” – and I drew a square – “and a stage in the corner”. We argued and argued and discussed and discussed and in the end we arrived at an exact position. Its not of course an exact position, it's a zone - where an actor – and he's forward on the stage mind you – can see within an angle of 120 degrees, which is within the span of his eyes. He can see everybody, and furthermore, no member of the audience is looking across stage at other members of the audience. We then developed the Olivier overall. And the miracle of the decision what to build was that it was not a grey compromise. We arrived at the form and that generated the whole building. From that form all the things I described to you at the beginning - the terraces, the front-of-house, the fly-towers, the relationship to London – spring from this moment.

PH:		But there are certain factors which don't change, aren't there? The scale of the human figure doesn't change, the need to be heard doesn't change. Therefore the distance from the point of command to the back, both in terms of visibility of what the human face is doing and audibility, is fixed, is geometric.
DL:		You're quite right. But if it was purely geometric, if it was totally measurable, then any bloody fool could design a theatre. The fact is that there are spatial qualities, which are irrespective of how far the farthest seat is away from anything, or whether the geometry is pure or irregular. There is a relationship that either hinders your enjoyment, or makes you want to co-operate with what is going on on the stage. Now these are abstract qualities and I dare say luck plays and enormous part in it.
PH:		You've designed universities, all sorts of building. Was designing a theatre something special for you?
DL:		Oh yes, its been a very tough nut to crack.
PH:		Because of the human usage, the human communication?
DL:		The National Theatre has come about through hundreds of people willing it into being – that's why it's there. It has come about when the language of architecture is non-existent, hence the unease, to put it mildly, which people express about modern architecture.
PH:		How many years of your life have you put into this?
DL:		With my partner Peter Softley and the team working on it - the consultants, Richard Pilbrow for the stage planning and lighting, the structural engineers, acoustic engineers…we've been involved for thirteen years.
PH:		You've described how the Olivier Theatre came about and how from that came the outside of the building. Now how did the other two theatres grow out of that?
DL:		Long ago we dismissed that absurd idea of making an adaptable barn that could do everything. I remember George Devine saying, “every play, every playwright, has his own spatial need – there is a space to fit every play.” There are discursive plays where it's very important that we talk to each other, actor and audience, and confront each other. Now the characteristic of confrontation is very straightforward – you need a rectangle and the audience frankly just facing. That is the essence of the Lyttelton Theatre.
PH:		I remember that a number of us on the building committee – Peter Brook, Michel St Denis, myself and I think George – thought that although the proscenium theatre suited much of the drama that was current in our theatre, it is in a sense a historical hiccup from hiccup from 1700 until now. But Sir Lawrence and the majority of the committee felt that you couldn't have a National Theatre without this proscenium capability. Although I didn't agree with it then, I think now, “Thank goodness”, because it enables us to have all kinds of visiting productions into the building.
PH:		Now, what about the third and smallest theatre, Denys, the Cottesloe? This is the theatre where I think many directors have a big desire to work – the laboratory.
DL:		Well, it's a space, with galleries on three sides, and a sort of bear pit of a floor with the possibility of many forms of staging.

PH:		But – and I find this rather poetic – that space is like the foundation o the whole building, isn't it? You couldn't remove it, or the whole structure would collapse. It's siting there supporting the Olivier Theatre.
DL:		And that's what it has to do dramatically. But it'll be rigged up on a do-it-yourself basis, with the minimum of equipment and, according to which way it's used, it will have and audience of between 200 and 400.
PH:		A proper assessment of the building from your point of view, which is the one that matters, an from the audience's point of view, which matters more than what I think, will take five years to reach. And during that five years there will be mistakes discovered. But the building, if I may say so, displays a classical order of a kind. It's an unfamiliar order but it's classical, with a lot of freedom within that.
DL:		Yes, but I do feel this will take time.
PH:		One thing that I've always found fascinating is the way that architects get selected.
DL:		I was asked had I done a theatre before, and I said I'd never done one, I then also explained that I'd never done, for instance a physics laboratory before…I mean, one's always got to start somewhere. I always had the feeling, and its been confirmed over the years, that I got the job because I said that whoever was going to work with me would have to work extremely closely for a very long time in the form of some sort of dialogue. And I think everybody was terribly relieved that they weren't talking to an expert who would say, “This is what the National Theatre is going to be- this is the architect speaking. And I think they probably also sensed that I may be the sort of person of whom they thought, or you thought, well, of we do contradict ourselves in front of him, he'll understand.
PH:		This has been a genuine collaboration, I think.
DL:		Well, I'm very glad you think that, because I chose a radical course. By “radical” I mean going to the roots, and that's what we all did; we went to the roots of the matter in those two years that we all worked together.
PH:		How do you react to criticism of your theatre?
DL:		I feel very tender about my buildings – not only the National Theatre but all of them – until they're able to speak for themselves. And I'm very resentful and prickly about criticism by people who have not experienced the building.
PH:		I'm sure you've heard, as I've heard, “Where are the cherubs, where is the gilt?”
DL:		Today in England we must do what belongs to today I've got no time for the cherubs. I mean, we have a future.