Critics rave over Lord Olivier

Press, 8 March 1982, Page 17

Critics rave over Lord Olivier

NZPA London Laurence Olivier, considered by many to be the world’s greatest, is back in the realm of superlatives as British critics rave over his latest, rare, appearance on television. Lord Olivier, created a baron in 1970 after being knighted in 1947, starred as a crusty old barrister in the Thames Television play “A Voyage Round my Father.” The play was written by a playwright and lawyer, John Mortimer, about his own father.

“Olivier’s performance was nothing less than electrifying,” said Herbert Kretzmer in the “Daily Mail.” Sean Day-Lewis in the “Daily Telegraph” said it ranked with Olivier’s best: “It was a performance to set down in the archive for posterity beside his memorable cinema roles as the youthful Henry V and the middle-aged Archie Rice in John Osborne’s ‘The. Entertainer’.” In the play Lord Olivier, who is 74, portrays an argumentative, demanding,

witty divorce lawyer who goes blind after hitting bis head on the branch of a tree — but refuses to acknowledge, to anyone, that he has lost his sight Nancy Banks-Smith in the “Guardian” wrote of the master of the English stage and screen: “That man once frightened me for life when I saw his face change dreadfully, between the wings and the stage, into a part. There are two such moments in ‘A Voyage Round My Father’: when the father goes blind and when he dies.”