Royal National Theatre

The Royal National Theatre of Great Britain is a building and theatre company on London's South Bank, located immediately east of the southern end of Waterloo Bridge. Housing three separate auditoria - the Olivier Theatre (named for the theatre's first artistic director, Sir Laurence Olivier), the Lyttelton Theatre (after Oliver Lyttelton, the first chairman of the Theatre), and the Cottesloe Theatre (for Lord Cottesloe, chairman of the South Bank Theatre Board) - it was designed by architect Sir Denys Lasdun and opened in 1976. The honorific "Royal" was added to the name in c.2000 but many people feel it is redundant, and choose to ignore it.

Notable productions

• Jumpers and Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
• The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Equus, and Amadeus by Peter Shaffer
• Hamlet with Albert Finney, one of the opening productions in the Lyttelton
• Ken Campbell's The Illuminatus! Trilogy, which opened the Cottesloe
• Lark Rise and The Mysteries, both Promenade Productions in the Cottesloe
• Betrayal by Harold Pinter
• Plenty and Pravda by David Hare
• Jerry Springer - The Opera
• An Inspector Calls, 1992 (still touring 2005)
• His Dark Materials, 2004
• The Madness of George III and The History Boys by Alan Bennett