On account of London Road’s blistering success, which led to a Summer extension in the Cottesloe, this double, double bill of new writing has been shunted from the Cottesloe into a ‘found’ space elsewhere in the National Theatre. Actually ‘found’ is rather misleading. Better to say ‘repurposed,’ since the Paintframe is an intergral space in the National: its set construction workshop. Double Feature is not site-specific or site-responsive, but ‘pop-up’ theatre in the truest sense.
And it doesn’t half look brilliant: a disused industrial hanger lined with steel and construction lamps. With its high ceilings and long, open floorplan, it would make an ideal replacement for the old Shunt Vaults. Were it not for the strength and scope of design on the National’s usual stages, you’d have good reason to call for the space’s transition to be made permanent.
Soutra Gilmour carries on exactly that same spirit of intelligent, bold design, dividing the space into two auditoria with a central arch. Not only has she dressed the overall space with a punchy sense of fun, her individual designs are remarkably varied in terms of both tone and functionality. From the end-on, punctured naturalism of Edgar and Annabel’s kitchenette to an atmospheric (almost immersive) impression of an East End pub in D.C. Moore’s The Swan. Her traverse stage for Nightwatchman enables both its content (cricket) and form (direct address), while she just about meets the significant challenges of Tom Basden’s ambitious oddity There Is a War.
That the four plays should be such different beasts is testimony to the uninhibited spirit of Double Feature, which marks a welcome move to integrate potential alongside tested excellence. Four young writers, two young directors (Lindsay Turner and Polly Findlay) and a predominantly youthful cast makes Double Feature something of a rarity for a theatre dominated by absolutely established talent. These are the artists that usually go unseen in the National’s ecology, tucked away in the safety of the National Theatre Studio, so it’s rather great to see them pushed into the public arena with all its challenges.
My one grumble is with NT Associate Ben Power’s recent Guardian blog that, while being both eloquent, elegant and a touch sycophantic, made the whole ‘pop-up’ concept seem planned from the off, when it was, in fact, a happy accident. Because it’s fine to admit it as such; the National deserves credit for the solution, for extending London Road without any programming casualties and doing so with flair. To disguise the fact – though Power never goes so far as to bend the truth – is to belie the process and, in fact, theatrical processes in general. Power’s article gives the sense of everything playing out as originally planned, entirely without hitch. In his series of essays On Directing Film, David Mamet describes film-making as entirely dependent on pre-production. To shoot the thing is just a matter of sticking to the plan. Theatre doesn’t work like that: it thrives on happy accidents and grows out of contingent occurrences. The internet offers, we are repeatedly told, the possibility to open out processes that have always occurred in secret. If that’s important, the least we can do is be honest about it.
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