Sir Peter Hall is a man of Notes. He is a director of plays who has become Director of the National Theatre. The skills of play directors are not those of performers (like his predecessor at the National, Lord Olivier). Play directors pride themselves on their ability to give what they call Notes. This sort of Note (scarcely recognised by dictionaries) is not the sort manual workers make, in notebooks or on notepaper: it is mouth work. Sometimes it is like the tuning note given to a band by piano or woodwind; sometimes like a note of disapproval or approbation uttered by a schoolmaster to his class, or a professor to his seminar. So now, in Sir Peter's diary, we find the National Director descending upon the actors rehearsing Horvath's play, Tales from the Vienna Woods, under the direction of Maximilian Schell:

LRB 17 November 1983 | PDF Download