Offstage Blood and Tears

In 1980 Peter Hall, Director of Britain’s National Theatre, received a letter from a colleague:

If I interpret you correctly, you want what I want: to get on with the business of directing and not to be administering a theatre so that other people can do the plays we ought to be doing; quite apart from a desire to keep certain colonials out of the corridors of power.

The writer was John Dexter; the upstart colonial, Michael Blakemore. In Stage Blood: Five Tempest­uous Years in the Early Life of the National Theatre, Blakemore’s second volume of memoirs, Hall and Dexter are cast as First and Second Villain.

Arguments with England, Blakemore’s earlier book, followed his life from the beaches of Sydney to English stages, and his first years as an actor, then director. The story halted when he joined the National Theatre. This volume covers the achievements and bitterness of the following five years and it is not only about him, it’s a correcting-history of Peter Hall’s own…