Who will get the most high-profile job in British theatre? Today the National Theatre announces who will take over from Nicholas Hytner as its sixth artistic director during its 50 year history. Recent reports have focused on two men, one very famous, the second more obscure.
The first is Kenneth Branagh, who certainly has the glamour, the celebrity contacts, and the facility with Shakespeare to follow in Laurence Olivier's footsteps and become the second actor to lead the institution.
He enjoyed success with his own Renaissance Theatre Company, although the fact he's never run a building is cause for worry, and in recent years he's been distracted by making films.
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The other front-runner is the media shy Rufus Norris, who also comes without a major artistic directorship on his CV. Norris is best known for directing the visionary Festen, one of the most unsettling plays to hit the West End in the early Noughties, and his relationship with the National is in rude health – he is an associate director and he directed The Amen Corner there earlier this year.
The process of the appointment is cloaked in secrecy. No formal candidates are ever listed, and the Board simply announces their chosen one when it has reached a decision. All the women who could have taken the job have already ruled themselves out.
But other names in the frame include the South African David Lan who runs the excellent Young Vic and Edward Hall, another associate director at the National. Hall is the son of the National's second artistic director, Peter Hall, and since taking over North London's Hampstead Theatre in 2011 he has lifted it out of the creative doldrums.
Beyond London the speculative front runners are Jonathan Church at Chichester Festival Theatre and Daniel Evans at Sheffield Theatres. Both of these have attracted stars and offered a skilful mix of classics and the cutting edge in their repertoire but their names are perhaps not yet big enough for the top job.
