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Programmes
The Archive contains copies of programmes for National Theatre productions, and productions visiting the National.Programmes from the Old Vic period (1963-1975) do not generally contain cast details or production credits. This information is available on separate free cast lists. Free cast lists have continued to be produced but most programmes from 1976 onwards contain detailed production credits. The National's programmes often contain specially commissioned articles or extracts from relevant secondary material. In addition they usually contain photographs of the cast, although these are often taken during the rehearsal period.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Opened 11 April 1967, Old Vic Theatre. Programme cover: detail from a 17th-century engraving (by courtesy of the Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson Theatre Collection). First print of nine versions; Archive catalogue reference: RNT/PP/1/1/128.“I know of nothing in all Drama more incomparable from the point of view of Art, or more suggestive in its subtlety of observation, than of Shakespeare's drawing of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are Hamlet's college friends. They have been his companions. They bring with them memories of pleasant days together. At the moment when they come across him in the play he is staggering under the weight of a burden intolerable to one of his temperament…Of all this, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz realize nothing. They bow and smirk and smile, and what the one says the other echoes with sicklier iteration.” From De Profundis by Oscar Wilde quoted in the programme.
Illuminatus!. Opened 4 March 1977, Cottesloe Theatre. Illuminatus is a cycle of five plays by Ken Campbell and Christopher Langham from books by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. The plays, performed together as an 8-hour epic, are The Eye of the Pyramid; Swift Kick Inc.; The Man Who Murdered God; Walpurgisnacht Rock; and Leviathan. Archive catalogue reference: RNT/PP/1/4/1.
The Plough and the Stars. Opened 20 September 1977, Olivier Theatre. Programme designed by Richard Bird and Michael Mayhew. Archive catalogue reference: RNT/PP/1/3/1.
“I was born in the city of Dublin; my father a city man, my mother a country woman, very Gaelic in her background, from a few miles north of the city. My earliest politics were being instructed, when I was six or seven years of age, to recognize the tune of 'God Save the King', to keep my hat on or my cap on if it was on, to put it on if it was not, and to sit down if I happened to be standing up and to remain seated. I did not know why, but that was so.” Liam O'Briain, Irish scholar, quoted in the programme.
The Far Side of the Moon. A Robert Lepage/Ex Machina production; opened 9 July 2001, Lyttelton Theatre. Programme cover-photograph by Sophie Grenier, designed by Michael Mayhew. Programme designed by Stephen Cummiskey. Archive catalogue reference: RNT/PP/1/2/234.
“The main narrative concerns two forty-something brothers – one a loud, successful gay television presenter, the other a nerdy failed scientist obsessed with space – who are trying to deal with the recent death of their mother; and their story is played out on a big, spectacular set of swivelling mirrors, sliding doors and projected images, which among other things, enables Lepage to take the central image of the show, a porthole-shaped window, and transform it into everything from the face of the moon and the clock on the wall of a downtown bar, to the hatch of a space capsule, the door of a tumble-dryer, and a cosmic birth canal through which little space-suited souls reach earth.” Glimpses of the Far Side by Joyce McMillan, an article commissioned for the programme.