Sir Trevor Nunn: ‘Everybody that I spoke to at that time thought I was nuts, but "Cats" ran for 22 years’

The acclaimed theatre director Sir Trevor Nunn is full of energy. Despite being 86, he defies the usual rules of ageing as we discuss his latest directing project, Speculations by Torben Betts, running at the Marylebone Theatre until January 3, 2027.

‘We are enjoying ourselves hugely. It’s a wonderful mixture of documentary investigation and rehearsing the scenes with that detail in mind,’ he says of the new play set in 1965 New York, which follows the American journalist Dorothy Kilgallen as she investigates a series of high-profile deaths. ‘Everybody in the company has been reading up and checking all the different factual possibilities. It's very, very intriguing every day,’ Trevor says.

As a director, he has worked on everything from Oklahoma! to Macbeth. He is best known for running the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) for 18 years (1968-1986) and the National Theatre for six (1997- 2003). He is now the Artistic Director of the Theatre Royal Haymarket and has been since 2011.

‘I have been fantastically lucky,’ he says looking back at his career which has spanned all of Shakespeare’s plays, directing the likes of Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench and writing the lyrics to the chart-topping song Memory from Cats, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

‘Andrew originally wanted to call it Practical Cats and I begged that the “Practical” be dropped,’ Trevor remembers. ‘Everybody that I spoke to at that time thought I was nuts, that it was doomed, that every character being a cat could not possibly make any sense or have a box-office life, and then it ran for 22 years.’

Cats was Trevor’s ‘holiday job’ (he was still in situ at the RSC at the time). He remembers T. S. Eliot's widow Valerie ringing him up as she had discovered a cat that had been excluded from the original works upon which the musical is based. ‘Tom had scrawled beside it “Too sad for children” so he didn’t include it in his volume,’ she told Trevor. ‘Shall I send it round?’

She did, and the character of Grisabella was born. One problem: they still needed a song for her, as Eliot’s original writing only spanned eight lines. ‘We approached all the famous lyricists at the time who all said, absolutely no. When we ran out, in desperation, I played Andrew's melody several times and read some passages of Eliot’s poetry and it became a lyric.’ When Elaine Paige recorded Memory it went to the top of the UK charts. Barbara Streisand then recorded it and it went to number one worldwide. ‘In those days you got a royalty every single time it was played anywhere,’ says Trevor smiling, ‘so I’ve got a very nice little house in Surrey — thank you Barbara!’

Of his time at Cambridge as a young man with ambitions of working in theatreland he rubbed shoulders with some of the greats. ‘I was there with a student actor called Ian McKellen and a student actor called Derek Jacobi and a student actress, lost to the profession, called Margaret Drabble.’ Trevor was also in the same college as John Cleese. ‘I thought John was wonderfully funny in a lugubrious way, so I urged him to come to The Footlights weekly meetings…. That evening he started talking to a student called Graham Chapman and it clicked, and that became everything through to Monty Python.’

Also in Trevor’s cohort was Miriam Margolyes. ‘It is disgraceful to report this, but in those days in The Footlights Review, which I was asked to direct, you could only have one girl. So I cast this girl Miriam Margolyes, who was outrageous then and is outrageous now.’

For all his starry accolades from the past, it is Trevor’s future projects that I am looking forward to the most. He shows no sign of stepping away from theatreland willingly anytime soon and why should he. Theatre is what he does best.

Your aesthetic hero

Well, I immediately wrote down Shakespeare, all 37 plays. Shakespeare is my religion. I mean, Shakespeare writes stunningly, staggeringly, three dimensionally about human beings, human nature, the contradictions of humans, as nobody else was doing before him, and for God knows how many centuries afterwards. He just had that astonishing complexity, and therefore I’m thrilled that I’ve done all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays, and I’m also very sad that I’ve done all 37 because that journey seems to me to have been completed.

I also hero worship everything about Pablo Picasso. I am very lucky to have a little apartment in Paris and again and again and again I go to the Picasso Museum. More recently, my aesthetic hero Stephen Sondheim. I did Sondheim shows, but I met him, spent time with him, visited him at his house in New York and he made lunch for me. We just got on wonderfully well, so that was very inspiring.

A book you’ve found inspiring

At university, I read Middlemarch by George Eliot, under the instructions of Dr F. R. Leavis, the notorious critic. I read all of the books on Leavis's list of great novels, and George Eliot is in there, but Dickens isn't. It wasn't until the very end of Leavis's life when he repented and said that maybe Dickens had written a couple of decent things. I, of course, in addition to George Eliot and Jane Austen, became fascinated with Dickens, and that fascination eventually led to the creation of a show called Nicholas Nickleby.

The last thing of note that you bought for yourself

I happened to be passing Messum’s art gallery in London and one of the paintings in the window made me do a double take. There was something recognisable about it so I went into the shop and was told it was called Pin Mill. I grew up in my hometown, Ipswich. The River Orwell comes down into Ipswich and my sister and I used to get a bus all the way to the river bank, then walk along the river to Pin Mill. I found out that it was for sale at a negotiable price, so there it is above the fireplace in my house in London. So I have my Pin Mill experience every day.

Your favourite painting

Presumably I’ve just answered it, however I also used to cycle with my sister from our little home, a two up/two down on a working-class street, to Bramford and we did our own little drawings of Flatford Mill. And there was a wonderful Constable exhibition at the local museum in Ipswich at Christchurch Mansion, and I went to that and just found myself in tears at this whole host of Constables, remembering that I’ve been to those places. So, I suppose, Flatford Mill by John Constable also qualifies.

The music that you work to

I love listening to Mozart, I listen to a great deal of Bach, especially since I’ve just done a play about Bach, I used to listen to Brahms every morning when I worked in Stratford-upon-Avon. I also am enraptured still by seeing interludes of Benjamin Britten, and that’s partly because I’ve met him.

A possession you’d never sell

I’m afraid this is a bit showy-offy. I got the idea, having read a lot of background about the original work called Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie, to do a faithful production of it at the Barbican Theatre. It was at Christmas time, but nothing whatsoever to do with the usual Peter Pan shows, which tend to be pantomimes. Ours had Peter played by a boy, as Barrie originally intended it, not played by an actress as many other productions did against his will. We did our version at the Barbican and it was a smash hit. Two years later I asked the RSC: ‘Do you intend to go back and do Peter Pan again?’ and they said no because they’d already done it, so then I did it at the National for two years.

During all of that, at an auction J.M Barrie’s little writing pad came up for sale. It has a leather top and base and a place for pens and so on, and it’s in my study in London. I see it every day, I touch it and worship it, so that’s a possession I’d never sell.

The last podcast you listened to

I have made podcasts but I don’t listen to them.

The person that would play you in a film of your life

Well, of course, George Clooney would just about do, maybe Brad Pitt? But then, I was thinking, the real person who should play me is Charlie Chaplin.

What you’d take to a desert island

I think for a book I’d like to take something by Einstein or about Einstein. I have a son who is a very, very, very clever scientist and I try to keep up with him in conversation, but he’s right at the forefront of experimental work at the moment with atoms, so a science book would be really good to take with me, so I can catch up and have better conversations with my son.

The items you collect

Countless photographs.

The thing that gets you up in the morning

Directing a show gets me up in the morning. I am as excited now as I was when I directed my first show at 18 years old.

A hotel you would go back and back to

It’s no longer called The London Hotel, New York, but I absolutely loved staying there over so many years. Meetings with writers like Stephen Schwartz and Rupert Holmes and so on, but also working in Broadway theatre, it’s a lovely little walk from there. Now I go back there whenever I am in New York and say hello to all of the front of house staff as they’re unchanged, but I don't stay there anymore because they've completely refurbished the interior, and I can't bear it.

An exhibition that has really impressed you

Like I said, I loved going to the Picasso Museum. I loved the Hockney exhibition a few years ago at the Royal Academy, that was sensational, but recently I went to the Matisse exhibition in Paris at the Grand Palais. Wonderful wonderful artwork, but top of the list was in Amsterdam. There was an exhibition of the work of Vermeer, room after room after room of masterpieces — that’s the best exhibition I’ve ever been to.

Your most memorable meal

My most memorable meal was in Amsterdam, having looked at the Vermeer exhibition. I went to a restaurant where you can’t order. There’s a set menu of eight courses, all delicate and contrasting. It was utterly sensational.

The best present you’ve ever received

Well, I think it’s not exactly a present, but my children and grandchildren are right up there as the most wonderful gift you could ever have, but there was one other present — how lucky can you get? When I was running the RSC, a rehearsal room space called the Conference Centre building was the original memorial theatre. I had a dream of turning it into a theatre again. I involved my designer friend John Napier, with whom I did everything, and we created a white card model of how that building could be transformed. We tried to fundraise for it, but whatever we did and where we went: nothing. We then took a trip to New York to fundraise: nothing. Put the model on display in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Gallery in Stratford with a little typed note saying: ‘This was a dream that didn’t come true.’

Two years later, an American visitor is desperate to get out of the pouring rain in Stratford. He runs down the street and goes into the gallery, eventually he looks at our model and he is fascinated. He says to the people at the gallery: ‘Who do I speak to about this?’ That man, Fred Koch, says he will be in London the following day, so I meet with him and pitch the idea and he says: ‘Sure, I’ll build that for you.’ That’s the best present I’ve ever had. It’s called the Swan Theatre, all paid for by Fred Koch.

‘Speculations’ by Torben Betts, directed by Sir Trevor Nunn, is running at the Marylebone Theatre until January 3, 2027.

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