Perfect casting for theatre's most demanding role

Thelma Holt applauds the choice of Trevor Nunn as director of the National

I am delighted - and very relieved - to learn of Trevor Nunn's appointment to succeed Richard Eyre as director of the National Theatre. Although the appointment committee must have been tempted to take the advice of those, including the Independent, who urged the appointment of a younger director, "someone who is hungry and wants to make their reputation through their work at the National" (leading article, 20 February), I do not believe that anyone who has not themselves run a large organisation can have any perception of what it is like to run the National.

In addition to needing the experience to be able to run three auditoria, an educational arm and an international venue, with responsibilities not only to London but to the rest of the country and to represent us overseas, the director of the National must be a politician who can deal with government ministers and Arts Council officials one moment, and then speak the language of the coalface to actors and technicians the next. I spent five very happy years working there as a producer, and with an insider's eye I can say that I would not want the job myself if I were offered the earth.

With the best will in the world towards our brilliant young theatrical Turks, it would have been a great mistake to have put one of them in the directorship. Trevor Nunn's first task will be to get himself accepted by the people who work there. With his spectacular career to date - head of the Royal Shakespeare Company at 28, director of musicals such as Cats and Les Miserables, and successful stage plays such as Tom Stoppard's Arcadia - Trevor will have no difficulty getting the building behind him.

When directing a play, you enclose yourself in a little fantasy world; sometimes the concentration is so great that you do not even hear the four-minute warning. If the director of the National is also a practitioner - and it is very important that Trevor himself should do productions - he must be generous enough not to resent the fact that he must come in an hour early and come back later to face the catering, administration and education departments, take phone calls from that show on tour, and yet still get on with his own productions. Trevor has that discipline.

He also has the track record to continue to hold the door open to the young. He has proved himself, so he can afford to be generous to others. In fact, it is Trevor's generosity of spirit that made me know from day one that I wanted the job to go to him.

The National Theatre has had only three directors since it began: Laurence Olivier, Peter Hall and Richard Eyre. Olivier, of course, was the founding spirit; and although he was not there long, he got the theatre up and running in those wonderful, heroic days when actors had the opportunity to train and perfect their craft in repertory companies.

Peter Hall was the politician par excellence. His great quality was that he could sup with any devil and come out of it whole. He had a high regard for talent and could gather it around him, delegate magnificently and inspire people's ambitions. Consequently, under his stewardship there was enormous variety.

Richard Eyre's great quality was his humanity. He knitted that building together when he came in, although those were times of stress. And he brought in more new work and more new directors.

Trevor Nunn is taking over at a time when risk-taking is going to be dangerous. But risks are necessary in theatre, and he will be extremely clever at taking calculated ones.

My only regret is that I serve on the Arts Council with Trevor, and I fear that his new appointment may cause us to lose him. The theatre needs him there, too.

Thelma Holt's new RSC production, `Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme', opened last night at the Barbican.