National Theatre

Proposals for a national theatre in Britain go back to 1848, when writer Effingham Wilson published a pamphlet calling for a permanent 'house for Shakespeare.' Shaw, Barrie, and Granville Barker all added their voices over the following decades. The National Theatre Act passed in 1949, but another fourteen years elapsed before the company came into being.

On 22 October 1963, Olivier's company opened at the Old Vic with Hamlet, starring Peter O'Toole. Olivier directed. The company remained at the Old Vic for thirteen years while its permanent building was designed and constructed on the South Bank by architect Denys Lasdun.

The Lyttelton Theatre opened on 16 March 1976 with a production of Hamlet, this time starring Albert Finney. The Olivier Theatre followed on 4 October 1976 with Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great. Queen Elizabeth II formally opened the full complex on 25 October 1976. Lasdun's brutalist concrete exterior divided opinion from the start; the Olivier's open platform stage, which extends into the fan-shaped auditorium, was designed with Shakespeare specifically in mind.

Peter Hall succeeded Olivier as artistic director in 1973 and oversaw the move to the South Bank. Under Nicholas Hytner, artistic director from 2003 to 2015, the National staged some of its most celebrated Shakespeare. Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear in Othello (2013, directed by Hytner) was broadcast via NT Live to cinemas worldwide, reaching audiences far beyond the South Bank. Simon Russell Beale's King Lear (2014) received the same treatment. NT Live, launched under Hytner, has since made National Theatre Shakespeare genuinely international.

With 1,150 seats in the Olivier, 890 in the Lyttelton, and 450 in the Dorfman, the building can run Shakespeare in repertoire (rotating different plays through the same season) alongside new plays simultaneously, giving the National a Shakespeare presence no other single London theatre can match.