In a corner of Rambutan, the buzzing little Sri Lankan diaspora restaurant just off London’s Borough Market, I’m midway through a rather nerdy theatre question to Indhu Rubasingham, new artistic director of the National Theatre. Suddenly — perhaps mercifully — we are interrupted. Restaurant founder Cynthia Shanmugalingam appears at our table bearing a plate.
“This is on the house,” she says, indicating a selection of buttermilk-fried chicken, fried bread and coconut chilli sambol.
Rubasingham beams with delight. “You’ve got to try this!” she exclaims, explaining that the chicken is Shanmugalingam’s British take on a traditional Sri Lankan dish. “It’s a real fusion food. You wouldn’t have that in Sri Lanka, you’d only have it here.”
We squeeze the plate on to our table — which seems to have shrunk since we sat down a while ago and ordered what now feels like half the entire menu. Sure enough, the zingy combination of peppery chicken and crunchy bread is delicious.
Somehow everything about this moment feels typical of Rubasingham. Immensely warm, instantly approachable and disarmingly frank, she seems completely unchanged since taking on the biggest job in British theatre.
The appointment puts her in charge of the flagship venue — a beacon of the industry with a workforce that stretches to 1,900, a national voice and a global reputation — and pitches her into the top tier of influence in the arts. It also makes her the first woman, and the first person of colour, to hold that post in the National Theatre’s 60-year history. That’s a landmark in itself: she’s already attracted headlines describing her as “the most powerful woman in British theatre”.
The National Theatre job is always a daunting prospect. Rubasingham’s in-tray includes programming three auditoriums, finding War Horse-level hits, handling budget expenditure of £122mn in the face of a tough economic climate and seeing through a £125mn fundraising programme. The National’s remit to speak to and for the nation also poses particular challenges at a time of febrile debate about identity.
The National is a flag-bearer as well as an innovator. It’s a provoker as well as populist. It’s brilliant when it’s doing all those things at once
But the 55-year-old director arrives on a tide of goodwill from the industry, where she is well-liked and enormously respected. And she has in her pocket a highly impressive record, born of decades in theatres and 11 years running the enterprising Kiln Theatre in north London, together with a galvanising zeal for innovation and an invaluable international perspective. These days, the National’s reach extends far beyond the building on London’s South Bank: through its digital platforms, it plays to an annual global audience of 28mn across 184 countries.
Rubasingham, born in the UK to Tamil Sri Lankan parents, talks about “bringing the world to the National Theatre and taking the National Theatre to the world”. One of her earliest jobs was with the Royal Court Theatre’s international director, Elyse Dodgson, an experience that opened her eyes to the wealth of theatrical traditions across the globe. She recently directed Anupama Chandrasekhar’s brilliant epic The Father and the Assassin, about the murder of Mahatma Gandhi, on the National’s Olivier stage.
But at the Kiln, she also staged Moira Buffini’s Handbagged, a highly entertaining — and quintessentially English — comedy about Queen Elizabeth II and prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and, more recently, Zadie Smith’s delightful response to Chaucer, The Wife of Willesden. The venue flourished under her leadership, with hits onstage and a £9mn refurbishment offstage.
That eclectic and expansive approach is at the heart of her plans for the National. “I want people who’ve loved the National still to love it and people who’ve never been to the National before to love it,” she says, as we work our way through spicy little chunks of honeymoon melon acharu (pickle) and a cluster of gundu dosas with coriander sambol.
“You can’t be all things to all people, but you can try to offer as broad a range as possible — whether that’s a western classic, an international classic, international new writing or promoting the brilliance we have around the country. The National is a flag-bearer as well as an innovator. It’s a provoker as well as populist. It’s brilliant when it’s doing all those things at once.”
The waiter sets down two glasses of lemongrass and ginger soda. “That’s a piece of lemongrass, not a straw,” he advises, sagely. No wine — “I’ve got to go back to work,” says Rubasingham, slightly ruefully, adding that if she were to drink, it would be very dry white wine.
My spies tell me she likes a negroni? “I do like a negroni!” she replies, amiably. “Who are your spies?”
Her packed first season, opening next month, certainly teems with exciting possibilities. Classics rub shoulders with world premieres, new voices with famous faces, international work with homegrown talent. The most eye-catching prospects include Lesley Manville and Aidan Turner in a revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Letitia Wright in the British premiere of American Tracey Scott Wilson’s The Story, and a return to repertory (once the staple of the National Theatre), with Paul Mescal leading a company in two complementary plays — Death of a Salesman and A Whistle in the Dark.
We’ll see transatlantic partnerships with Brooklyn Academy of Music and The Shed in New York. And, down the line, there’ll be new work from immersive giants Punchdrunk plus a world premiere — as yet undefined — from Stormzy. Stormzy! How much can she tell me about that?
But she opens, emphatically, with a new twist on one of the oldest plays in existence: Euripides’ Bacchae reworked by actor and writer Nima Taleghani. It’s a very deliberate choice, says Rubasingham: a work bubbling with anarchic spirit that reaches back into antiquity, staged in the National’s Olivier auditorium, which is inspired by the great amphitheatre at Epidaurus.
“Dionysus is the god of theatre,” she adds, as we tackle a fiery red pineapple and mustard seed curry. “He’s also disruptive. It’s bringing a bit of chaos into the next chapter of the National Theatre.”
Even so, is it not risky to open her account with a new script from a first-time playwright on that vast Olivier stage? And won’t rewiring an ancient Greek tragedy annoy some people?
“You’re making me scared Sarah!” says Rubasingham, with a generous laugh. “But it’s important to be scared. If I wasn’t scared, I wouldn’t be doing my job. If I can represent an ounce of the excitement I got when I read the script, that would be a start. And it’s a statement of intent. Euripides in his time was considered an anarchic figure. I want these different voices, I want new writing, but I value the history.”
Hot on the heels of Bacchae comes another classic: Hamlet (the play with which Laurence Olivier launched the National in 1963), with Sri Lankan actor Hiran Abeysekera in the lead. Stormzy may be in the offing, but Rubasingham emphasises that she wants to embrace the theatre’s past.
“I love what these two opening plays are doing,” she says. “Honouring what’s gone before — the history of theatre and the history of the National — but bringing a modern spin. I love that balance.”
Theatre sneaked up on Rubasingham unawares. Born in Sheffield, she grew up in the Midlands and was heading towards a career in medicine — at school she was “irritatingly” good at sciences (“I wanted to be arty, I wanted to be cooler”) — when she got a work experience placement at Nottingham Playhouse. She fell instantly in love.
“It was summer. I’d watch people coming out of their offices at six o’clock looking quite grey. But I’d be with these theatre people, buttering bread for their props, sweeping the stage. I was behind the magic curtain, so to speak. It made me obsessed with trying to learn as much as possible.”
That was it. She switched tack and made for a drama degree at the University of Hull, studying extra A-levels to qualify. Her parents, she says, were surprised at her sudden change of heart — her father was an eye specialist, and the expectation was that she would follow a similar route. But, crucially, they understood and supported her. “In their generation, in Sri Lanka, social mobility came through law, medicine or engineering. But what was really good was that they started to get interested in theatre to find out more about it.”
That same summer she saw Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart: a searing drama about the Aids crisis. That too had a profound effect — “I didn’t realise theatre could be so relevant and so immediate.”
These communities are so different but find a human connection. That’s the National Theatre I want — where people find connections in the most unlikely places
The Normal Heart left her with a firm belief in the ability of live drama to tackle painful issues with humanity and to move understanding and empathy in audiences. It’s a line she’s keen to pursue at the National. She’s talked of staging “state-of-the-world” plays, tackling global issues — “whether it’s borders, the internet, big tech, sport, religion” — and she prizes the theatre’s capacity to act as a public forum. “That’s been the role of theatre since the Greeks,” she points out.
The National has a rich history of politically and socially engaged drama. But Rubasingham takes charge at a time of rancorous divisions and bitterly polarised discourse. Identity — particularly national identity — has become a contested issue. Theatre, she suggests, can play a role in tackling that.
“The National is there to tell stories that affect and reflect the whole country, and to hold the multiple voices and perspectives that cumulatively make up the country. [The task] is to try to understand. I don’t think it’s about being leftwing or rightwing, it’s about asking questions and trying to get underneath the surface.”
“In a way, that’s why we’re here,” she adds, gesturing to the busy tables around us. “The reason I picked this restaurant is that I consider myself British, with all the complexity that means. My parents came from Sri Lanka, my dad came over to work for the NHS — which I think is one of the most wonderful British organisations. This food isn’t just authentically Sri Lankan. The mixture of fried chicken with sambol and toast is because of the British contribution. It’s expansive rather than reductive.”
A couple more dishes make their entrance. As we sample a gorgeously smoky and creamy chicken pongal rice, we talk a little about Rubasingham’s parents. Life was often tough for UK immigrants in the 1960s. How was their experience?
“They didn’t really talk about it,” Rubasingham says. “I think they wanted to bring me and my brother up to believe that we could fit in and that as long as you studied hard, you could achieve what you wanted. I now look back and I think it was much more difficult than they ever said. But I also just think about those times. You couldn’t have that [instant] contact with your family that you can now. Family and community really were important to them. I think that generation needed that support from each other.
“But there was also a lot of pride. My parents loved this country and Sri Lanka: there was a lot of love and respect for the opportunities of both cultures. We were taught very much to respect both.”
Sadly, her father died more than a decade ago, so won’t see her in her latest role (her mother is still with us). But running any theatre can also be demanding, and such is the profile and complexity of the National Theatre job that pretty much whatever you do, someone isn’t happy. Several of her predecessors wrote of the strain, with Sir Richard Eyre comparing it to “three-dimensional chess in the dark”. And today many people in the public eye are subjected to vile online abuse, often racist or sexist. Has that affected her?
“I remember post-Brexit a few of my staff at the Kiln experiencing hostility — Europeans as well as global majority,” she says. “They were really shocked. It’s a hard thing to be honest . . . ”
People will always have the right to have an opinion about your work. So you listen to the genuine criticism and find a way to block out the other stuff
She falls quiet for the first time. “Sorry, Sarah,” she says, after a very long pause. “I’m just trying to think . . . I don’t know whether it’s got worse or people are able to express it more. I think what has got worse has been the ability people have to hide behind social media and to say things . . . that they wouldn’t ever say to your face. That’s what’s been unleashed.
“I can’t think about it too much,” she says of her own position. “But what I do know is that I’ll have good counsel around me. I’m working with brilliant people. The National is made of the people past and present who have invested in it, loved it and owned it.
“I remember asking Richard Eyre how you deal with the criticism. He said, ‘You don’t, you just have some good friends you can talk to and you get on with it’ . . . People will always have the right to have an opinion about your work. So you listen to the genuine criticism and find a way to block out the other stuff.”
In essence, it’s that sort of hostility to which she hopes theatre can prove an antidote. She points to PRIDE, a new stage musical of the 2014 film about gay activists raising money for striking miners’ families, as a highlight of her programme. “I love that story and the fact that it’s based on truth: these communities that are so different but find a human connection and support. That’s the National Theatre I want — where people find connections in the most unlikely places.”
The food has finally defeated us. As our waiter boxes up the remains, I ask what other advice former National Theatre directors have given her. It’s mostly been about looking after her health, she reflects. “I am being really good. I’m very close to my family, which is a good counterbalance to the theatre world. I’m trying to exercise regularly. I’m taking lots of vitamins.”
What about hobbies? “Hobbies?” She looks at me as if I have suddenly sprouted a second head. “Who has time for hobbies in this job? No!”
She doesn’t knit? Or garden? “No, no!” (She finds the prospect very funny). Television programmes? “Even that. I’m so behind . . . I love watching cookery programmes. I buy all the really obscure ingredients and save them — I have a cupboard full of amazing ingredients.”
She has a weakness too for medical TV soaps, she confesses. “I love watching reruns of ER. And I used to be obsessed with Grey’s Anatomy. I think I’m a secret doctor at heart.”
Maybe. But, as we pack up, it’s noticeably not the operating theatre she’s heading back to. So what is it about this ancient art form that has held her in its grip since that teenage work experience job?
“I love that at its best, it’s bigger than any one person’s vision,” she says. “I love that it’s about seeking the truth, something bigger than yourself. I love that it’s about empathy. And it’s one of the few spaces now where you don’t have your mobile phone on for two hours. The way technology is going, the act of theatre — of actors, musicians and an audience being together — is going to become a radical act in itself.”
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