Fifty Years on Stage, National Theatre, review Something remarkable happened at the start of this celebration of the 50th anniversary of the National Theatre. Its Director, Nicholas Hytner, took to the stage to deliver some prefatory remarks before the cameras started rolling for the live TV relay and so loud and prolonged were the cheers and applause that he couldn't speak for several minutes. It wasn't ever thus. The Prince of Wales once described the building as a "clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting" and when Peter Hall took over from Laurence Olivier and moved the company from the Old Vic to its new home on the South Bank, he received no end of flak, not just from critics and commentators but from colleagues too. Just as well perhaps that he described himself as an adrenalin addict in one of the many evocative archive clips shown during this extraordinary night. For me the National Theatre has always seemed the brightest jewel in Britain's theatrical crown. I started reviewing shows there in the Seventies when I somehow managed to blag press tickets as a young reporter on the Surrey Advertiser in Guildford. As well as all the nights of pleasure, and just occasionally pain, it has been an education for me, the place where I have learnt the most about plays and musicals and the somewhat dodgy craft of theatre criticism. Theatrical galas can often be more of a penance than a pleasure, but not this one. Leading from the front as ever, Hytner directed it himself with a cast that seemed like a who's who of British theatre. There were also evocative film clips of actors who are no longer with us, ranging from Paul Scofield in Amadeus to Nigel Hawthorne in the Madness of George III and that great NT stalwart Michael Bryant as the Fool in King Lear. In a show lasting almost two and a half hours without an interval there was barely a dull moment. The evening took a more or less chronological approach beginning with the first scene of Hamlet, the debut production of Olivier's NT and working through to Hytner's superb recent Othello followed by a witty epilogue about the NT itself from Alan Bennett's The Habit of Art, superbly delivered by Frances de la Tour. Bennett indeed was one of the biggest stars of the show. He's a great writer but he is also a delightful actor and here he stepped into the shoes of the late and much missed Richard Griffiths to play the schoolmaster Hector in a riotous scene from his wonderful play The History Boys. It was sheer comic delight. Among the stars, Judi Dench was profoundly moving as she revisited her performance as Cleopatra, with that familiar catch in her voice and an extraordinary depth of emotion, while film of the NT's landmark1964 revival of Coward's Hay Fever directed by the author revealed Maggie Smith in all her high-definition comic glory. Standing on a bare stage, Simon Russell Beale delivered a beautifully simple and deeply felt speech from Hamlet that seemed to distil the very essence of the character and another highlight was a recreation of Bill Bryden's great promenade production of the medieval mystery plays, one of the first shows I saw at the NT. And for sheer joy it was hard to beat Sit Down, Your Rockin" The Boat from Richard Eyre's great production of Guys and Dolls. Splendid too to see Derek Jacobi and Michael Gambon in the roles originally played by Gielgud and Richardson in Pinter's No Man's Land. And naturally there was a starring appearance of Joey from War Horse. The National Theatre strikes me as one of the very few institutions of British public life in which it is possible to take unqualified pride. How lucky we are.