Income at the Royal National Theatre rose by more than 40 per cent last year but still lags behind its financial performance before the outbreak of Covid-19.
The charity’s income was £80.8m in the year to the end of March 2022, up from £56.3m in the preceding 12 months, when the theatre was closed under government lockdown restrictions.
The National Theatre’s income was consistently above £100m a year before the coronavirus crisis.
The data is included in the charity’s latest accounts, which were published with Companies House overnight.
The growth is driven by an eight-fold increase in trading income from £3.7m to £28.1m, which includes funds raised from the theatre’s London shows and touring performances.
The accounts also show that the charity received another £17m in funding from Arts Council England, the same amount as the previous year.
The National Theatre spent £80.1m in 2021/22, up from £51.6m in 2020/21, and recorded a small surplus of £700,000.
The average number of people employed by the theatre across the year was 669, nearly 100 fewer than in 2020/21.
The charity said in 2021 that it had been forced to make a quarter of its employees redundant after Covid-19 hit.
The accounts say the National Theatre took out a £19.7m loan through the government’s Cultural Recovery Fund in March 2021, with repayments due to start in 2025.
Writing in the introduction to the accounts, Sir Damon Buffini, chair of trustees at the National Theatre, said the charity had gone “straight back to work” in 2021/22 after facing “one of the most challenging years of operation in the National Theatre’s history”.