More About the National Theatre

The National makes its own work rather than hosting somebody else's. It builds its productions in its own workshops, runs its own Box Office and plays several shows at once across three theatres.

The building

The complex was designed by Sir Denys Lasdun with Peter Softley and built between 1969 and 1976: reinforced concrete, flat roofs and stacked terraces, with the Lyttelton squared up to the main frontage and the Olivier turned at forty-five degrees to it, the two linked by foyers running the full height of the building. The studio theatre has its own entrance and foyer, which is why the Dorfman still has a different door today.

It is Grade II* listed, first listed on 23 June 1994 as the Royal National Theatre. The whole complex is a single listing; the three theatres inside it are not listed separately.

How it got here

People had been asking for a national theatre since 1848, when a London publisher called for "a house for Shakespeare". It took a century to get the money, with Parliament passing the National Theatre Bill in 1949, and even then the plans moved about so much that Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother, laid the foundation stone in 1951 and joked that it ought to be put on castors.

The company didn't wait for its building. It opened at the Old Vic in October 1963 with Hamlet, starring Peter O'Toole, under Laurence Olivier as its first director, and stayed there for thirteen years. When the South Bank building ran late, Peter Hall moved the company in as soon as the first theatre was ready, and they rehearsed in what was still a building site. The Lyttelton opened first, in March 1976, the Olivier followed that October, and the Queen opened the building officially on 25 October 1976. The small, flexible third theatre, the Cottesloe, came in 1977, and was rebuilt and renamed the Dorfman in 2014.

More than one theatre was the plan from the start: the board decided that a single auditorium big enough for everything would be a compromise, so the Olivier got the open stage and the Lyttelton the traditional arch.

The foyers were part of the idea too. The building was designed so that everyone, from the director to the wigmakers to the audience, would be under one roof, which is why it opens at 10am, with bars, cafés and somewhere to sit whether or not you have a ticket that night.

The National has had seven directors, from Olivier to Indhu Rubasingham, who took over in spring 2025 as the first woman in the job.

NT Live

The National started broadcasting its own productions live into cinemas in June 2009, beginning with Phèdre with Helen Mirren, directed by Nicholas Hytner. It still does, to cinemas across the UK and around the world, so a show in one of these three theatres can reach a screen near you. Inter Alia, which premiered in the Lyttelton in 2025, went out to cinemas and then on to the West End.

To watch from your sofa, National Theatre at Home streams a back catalogue of past productions, by subscription or by renting a single show, and a wide range of them come with captions, BSL or audio description. Now and then the National puts one up free: The Jungle Book, in the Olivier this winter, goes on YouTube for a week in March 2027.

Not every production is filmed, so if there's a show you've set your heart on, a ticket for the stage is the only sure way to see it.

What plays here

New plays, classical revivals, adaptations and the occasional musical. Hall's masked Oresteia went on in 1981, the first musical staged here was Guys and Dolls in 1982, and the Studio was founded in 1984 to develop new work.

Work made here often has a life after the National. Pride played the Dorfman and moves to the Bridge Theatre from 12 November 2026, Hadestown, which played the Olivier in 2018 on its way to Broadway, is at the Lyric, and The Rise and Fall of Little Voice goes on tour from February 2027, after its Dorfman run.

Each of the three theatres has its own story and its own past productions, and those sit on the Olivier, Lyttelton and Dorfman guides rather than here.