National Theatre's new boss: Our plays won't tell you what to think
Talk about a statement of intent: the National Theatre in London has issued two video trailers to plug its 2025/26 season, the first created by its new director, Indhu Rubasingham. One is a series of close-ups of women's blood-stained mouths, rhythmically chanting about how they found a man so 'sickening' that they 'chewed his face off'.
This is to promote Rubasingham's staging of Euripides' great tragedy The Bacchae. It launches her reign at the National with what she promises to be 'wild anarchic energy' in a new rap version by the actor Nima Taleghani. Who, incidentally, has never written a play before.
And the other trailer? It shows the Sri Lankan actor Hiran Abeysekera, dressed in Jacobean ruff and declaiming, 'To be or not
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