National lampoon

To Mitchellise, verb - a style of theatrical direction that leaves some people cold and makes others swoon. Applies to productions of Chekhov, Martin Crimp and, in the not-so-distant future, Euripides (Women of Troy). See also "Mitchellisation".

Yes, you've guessed it: audiences contain lots of people who disagree with one another about what constitutes good theatre, and the news that Katie Mitchell is to direct her fourth play at the National Theatre in just over a year has upset some of them. Presumably, they have noticed that other directors work at the National just as often. It's just that Howard Davies has not (yet) restaged Macbeth in a glue factory, and Marianne Elliott has not hit on the idea of having every actor enter upstage left, hopping. Mitchell's innovations, it is said, are of this order.

In a philosophical, horses-for-courses frame of mind, perhaps we ought to surmise peaceably that love or hatred of Katie Mitchell's work is simply a matter of taste - there are those who adore her and those who don't.

But of course, if we said that, we would be ducking out of an argument that is, at least in part, actually about money and that hoary old favourite, "What is the National Theatre for?" Or as an anonymous "Guest" puts it on What's On Stage: "Nicholas Hytner will give her [Katie Mitchell] more work regardless of the reviews and then turn up in the paper saying we shouldn't be having funding cuts. Read the papers, Mr Hytner, we're sick of The Arts Council pouring our money down the drain on daft nonsense."

Daft nonsense? Can it be that we live in an era when theatregoers prefer sensible nonsense to daft nonsense? Is it true that "our" money ends up gushing into some sewer where Mitchell and her acolytes lurk and laugh at our gullibility? Has Mr Hytner really never read a newspaper?

If he did he might have noticed an interview with the theatre producer Robert Fox that appeared in The Times. Now, if you're going to condemn British theatre, this is surely the way to do it.

"There's a lot of s**t on", says Fox. "I look down the list of West End shows, and I think, 'What year are we in?' Equus. Evita. The Glass Menagerie. Where are we? What time is this?"

"The Government should give the National money so that the National does things nobody else can do," he continues, "But the National isn't funded well enough to be brave. So they do what the West End does. And you get a kind of medium dumbing down. I'm not saying the work's bad. It isn't. But you don't think, 'F**k, that's amazing! That is really out there!'"

Instead, he concludes, "they end up doing Alan Bennett plays. And if there's one person who really doesn't need a subsidy, it's Alan Bennett." How right he is, though this isn't quite the way Tony Blair sees it.

We don't have to choose between subsidizing The History Boys II: History Boys Reloaded and an uncommercial, Mitchellised revival of Gammer Gurton's Needle. Nicholas Hytner has set himself exactly the kind of moderate, well-intentioned remit that Fox is talking about: "the most ambitious possible work for the largest possible number of people". A usefully vague phrase, perhaps, where "the largest possible number of people" might easily have been interpreted to mean "full houses". Instead Hytner has resisted the temptation to play it safe and delivered a programme that mixes sure-fire winners with something a little more radical.

The complaints that greet Katie Mitchell's work could be taken as a demonstration that Hytner has got his balancing act about right - she really is the most "out there" director the National and its audiences can stomach. Perhaps Fox is thinking of the sort of show that makes it to the Barbican. Or maybe he just missed the National's collaboration with Punchdrunk in Wapping.