12/6/21, 4:32 PM Alan Bennett sets new play in a Yorkshire hospital facing closure | Theatre | The Guardian

Theatre

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Alan Bennett sets new play in a Yorkshire hospital

facing closure

Chris Wiegand
@ChrisWiegand
Fri 23 Feb 2018 06.30 EST

Alan Bennett has set his first new play in more than five years on the geriatric ward of a
Yorkshire hospital threatened with closure. It is both “extremely funny and very
moving” says its director, Nicholas Hytner, who likens it to The History Boys but with
the over-80s.

Allejujah! takes place in a hospital on the edge of the Pennines. As its fate hangs in the
balance, a documentary crew arrives to chart daily life, from the old people’s choir to
the struggle to find beds on the Dusty Springfield geriatric ward. “It’s about old age and
the experience of old age,” says Hytner, “not just of those who are old themselves but
for those who care for them, including their families.”

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Allelujah! is the 10th collaboration between the pair whose previous hits include The
Madness of George III, The Lady in the Van and The History Boys, all of which became
popular films. Hytner has been Bennett’s preferred director since they first worked
together on The Wind in the Willows in 1990. Bennett gave him a first draft of
Allelujah! last summer. “I didn’t know what he was writing about,” said Hytner. “I
usually don’t. The first draft is always quite rough, and we’re now in the middle of the
process where it goes back and forth between us.”

The writer has previously described handing over a script to Hytner, the former artistic
director of the National Theatre, as being like a pupil turning up with his homework.
“It kind of is like I’m marking the essay,” said Hytner, “but that’s because he kind of
prefers it written down to me ear-bashing him. It’s not me saying you’ve got to do this
here and that there. It’s like what an editor does with the first draft of a book.”

Allelujah! ‘comes from the gut’, says Nicholas Hytner. Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer

When asked how political Allelujah! is, Hytner said there has always been a “core of
steel” to Bennett’s writing. He said the playwright himself had recoiled from the
description of it as urgent, saying that it didn’t sound like him. But, said Hytner, “I
think I’d probably stand by it [urgent] even if we’re not using it.”

Bennett has spoken about the importance of the NHS for years. In 2014, he criticised
the coalition government, saying it wanted to “roll back the state – and that includes

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12/6/21, 4:32 PM Alan Bennett sets new play in a Yorkshire hospital facing closure | Theatre | The Guardian

the NHS, which is being stealthily sold from under us who are its rightful owners”.

According to Hytner, Allejujah! has a “freewheeling theatricality” and “comes from the
gut”. In form, it recalls The History Boys, Bennett’s 2004 play about Sheffield students
preparing to take Oxbridge entrance examinations: “The play moves about the hospital
in the same way that The History Boys moves about the school … And there’s a lot of
song and dance. Except it’s the over-80s doing the song and dance rather than 18-year-
olds.”

Allelujah! will be staged this summer at the new Bridge theatre, next to Tower Bridge,
London. It is produced by the London Theatre Company, which Hytner co-founded,
after leaving the National Theatre, with the National’s former executive director Nick
Starr. Hytner said that the Bridge had been “a massive risk” as it was “a new theatre in
a part of London where there has never been large-scale commercial theatre”. He and
Starr had rolled the dice, he said, “on a premise that was completely unproven, which
was that commercial theatre needn’t be confined to the West End. Just the fact that
people have found us and bought tickets and turned up has absolutely delighted us.”

Allelujah! opens on 11 July and runs to 28 September. Casting has yet to be announced.
Hytner will also direct the world premiere of Alys, Always, a psychological thriller
written by Lucinda Coxon and based on the debut novel by Harriet Lane. Alys, Always
will open in January 2019.

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