Facebook Twitter Pinterest Simon Callow as Mozart (right), and Felicity Kendal as Constanze Weber in the first production of Amadeus, directed by Peter Hall at the National Theatre, London, in 1980. Few visitors to the current National Theatre – recently lavishly extended with £80m of private money – remember or appreciate the near-fatal difficulties of the building’s birth. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Peter Hall in 1968, during the filming of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Paul Rogers (left) as Bottom, and Judi Dench as Titania (right). But, as he admitted in private, Hall’s frenetic diary during six decades was also driven by the pressures of alimony and school fees. However, no other theatrical figure in his lifetime would have been able or willing to put in the long nights and bloody fights that brought the National Theatre into being.

Source: The Guardian September 12, 2017 09:55 UTC