The e-mail went on to describe the plot of “The Magistrate,” a Victorian farce, from 1885, by Arthur Wing Pinero, which Nick wanted to produce on the Olivier stage. In 1969, at 13, he had seen Alastair Sim in the play’s title role at the Chichester Festival Theater, and he now imagined me in the same part. As it happened, I had seen the very same production as a 23-year-old drama student. I had loved it so much that, given the chance, I had directed the play and played a small role in it the following year in American summer stock. In the intervening four decades, I had not heard the play mentioned even once.

My answer to the two questions that began Nick’s e-mail? Yes and yes.

And so it was that on the first day of the following October I found myself in the bowels of the National, meeting the 21 British actors who would be my onstage colleagues for the next five months. There were roughly 150 actors employed by the National that day, working on shows in various stages of rehearsal and production. Of all of them I was the only American.

That morning, as I navigated the building’s mazelike hallways, I saw small signs that pointed the way to rehearsal rooms for three or four different plays. At 1:30 p.m. all those rehearsals broke for lunch simultaneously, and scores of actors headed to the Blue Room. This is the National’s canteen, a bright, utilitarian dining room with a capacity of around 60.

The actors piled in, lined up for hot lunches and then sat together in groupings loosely based on the shows they were working on. It was a daily ritual not unlike that of a high school cafeteria, the difference being that, instead of raucous teenage schoolkids, this crowd included some of the finest English-speaking stage actors in the world.

I shortly learned that, in the coming months, I would be sharing the building with Fiona Shaw, Alex Jennings, Rory Kinnear, Frances de la Tour, Anthony Sher and Simon Russell Beale. These men and women are among Britain’s most highly regarded actors, but in the Blue Room the whiff of hierarchy is barely detectable.

The same egalitarian spirit prevails in the Green Room, the National’s pub. It is about 20 feet from the Blue Room, across a large common space whose walls are covered with announcements and schedules. Every night all three of the National’s theaters discharge their companies at roughly the same time, and a large contingent from every show congregates in the pub, joining their guests and friends.