The National Theatre is to stage performances on Sundays, in a move that could put pressure on other London theatres to follow suit with a seven-day week.

The announcement yesterday came after resistance to Sunday openings from trade unions, and staff at the National Theatre are thought to have been offered double pay for the extra shifts. The deal will cost the National Theatre between £300,000 and £500,000 a year.

The theatre’s director, Nicholas Hytner, said: “We are a public service organisation and we know that people who work hard during the week want to go to the theatre on Sunday afternoons.”

Under the deal, which took Hytner two years to reach with Equity, Bectu and the Musicians Union, the theatre’s two main auditoriums, the Lyttelton and the Olivier, will open for Sunday matinee performances. It was decided not to run performances on Sunday evenings because people would be returning to work the next day. It was also felt it would be too much for the theatre staff and actors.

One of the first plays expected to be shown in the Sunday slot is Sophocles’s Oedipus, with Ralph Fiennes. A new play by Sir David Hare, Gethsemane, is also expected to be performed on Sundays next year.

Speaking at the National Theatre’s 2008 season launch, Hytner scathingly attacked the Arts Council of England, describing its approach to arts funding as “bollocks”. The handling of proposed grant cuts to one in five organisations supported by the Arts Council was a strategic catastrophe, he said. He placed some of the blame on “tyrannical” regional Arts Council bodies behaving as “unacceptable fiefdoms”.

The affected organisations include the Northcott Theatre in Exe-ter, where Hytner started, and the Bush Theatre in West London, which he credits with unearthing playwrights whose work he is staging at the National. He had lobbied on their behalf, and in support of the National Student Drama Festival. In each case he received unsatisfactory explanations. Nicholas Hytner Last week actors passed a vote of no-confidence in the Arts Council after a tempestuous open meeting at the Old Vic. The 194 orchestras, theatres, galleries and other bodies in line to lose funds were given five weeks’ notice of the judgments and had until Tuesday to appeal. Final decisions will be made by early February and take effect from April. The cuts make funds available for 80 new projects.

Hytner defended the “arm’s-length” principle by which the Arts Council rather than the Government allocates funds. Last year he worked with the organisation on a campaign to secure a generous government settlement for the arts. He also agreed that the Arts Council should be bold and sift out dead wood. “Having said that, the current situation is a terrible mess. They [the spending plans] seem to be ill-thought-through and certainly very unfair on those who have been told to prepare for cuts . . .

“You read and hear a huge amount [from the Arts Council] which is, bluntly, bollocks. A hell of a lot of people in positions of power and influence don’t just believe the bollocks, they live the bollocks. They complicate rather than simplify. I think there is a very simple proposition here. Good theatre – and for ‘theatre’ read the performing arts in general – deserves public investment.” Devolution of power to regional Arts Councils had led to discrepancies in the criteria for judging organisations in different parts of the country, he added.

“A new chief of the Arts Council should have a good look at what the regional councils are up to. Some of these have turned into unacceptable fiefdoms.”

Last night the Arts Council said that it expected to revise some of its decisions after hearing the appeals.

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