The National Theatre's years at the Old Vic were the most Shakespearean period in its history, one which included Laurence Olivier's Othello and Shylock, a radical all-male As You Like It, the Berliner Ensemble's Coriolanus and Tom Stoppard's classic offshoot, Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead. ...
New paperback edition - The interweaving lives of Ida John, Sophie Brzeska and Fernande Olivier: three mould-breaking women who forged modern relationships with extraordinary men (writer Augustus John, and artists Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Picasso).
In the 1930s he established himself as a wide-ranging Shakespearean actor. When the new wave of British drama began in the late 1950s, Olivier was immediately part of it. As an actor of such wide range, and a successful producer and director, Olivier was a natural choice to bring the National Theatre into existence in 1963.
