THE PRESS THURSDAY, JULY 13, 1989. Olivier’s theatre

Press, 13 July 1989, Page 12

THE PRESS THURSDAY, JULY 13, 1989. Olivier’s theatre

The greatness of Laurence Olivier has long been evident in popular opinion and in the fact that all who act and direct the great Shakespearean roles are unable to do so without considering how Olivier played them. His Hamlet, Sir Toby Belch, Macbeth, Henry V, Othello, Coriolanus, Hotspur, Richard 111, and Lear — among his 121 stage roles — created sensations in their time. He worked in 58 films, sometimes directing them as well as acting in them, and played in 15 television productions. He left his stamp as a director of stage plays as well as an actor. With his great contemporaries — John Gielgud, Edith Evans, Sybil Thorndike and the young Paul Schofield — he helped Britain to dominate English-speaking theatre for decades. His death ends a huge. and diverse career.

Like so many actors of his time, Lord Olivier tried Hollywood. He later confessed that his English stage style did not work in front of Hollywood’s cameras. Greta Garbo preferred another actor to play opposite her and he returned to the London stage for Old Vic productions. He brought an Old Vic company to New Zealand and Australia in 1948, playing “Richard III,” the “School for Scandal,” and “The Skin of Our Teeth.” Vivien Leigh was then his wife and leading lady. Ngaio Marsh’s student theatre was already performing plays and he visited a production at Canterbury University College. Ngaio Marsh was already a personal friend. The Old Vic productions helped to stimulate theatre in New Zealand, which had not been visited by touring companies of major performers for nearly a decade. This tour helped to revive efforts to establish professional theatre in New Zealand, and particularly the notion of a national theatre. The concept came closest to success in Ngaio Marsh’s briefly-lived British Commonwealth Theatre Company in 1951 and later in the New Zealand Players, founded by Richard and Edith Campion in 1953. In turn, these ventures led to the development of New Zealand’s successful regional theatres. Back in London, Olivier tried to revive the actor-manager tradition by buying the St James Theatre. However, this business venture failed. In 1963 he was appointed the first director of the National Theatre, an

enterprise for which he was a leading advocate. After his first attempt, he eventually became a great screen actor, too, especially in playing the title role in the marvellous film of “Henry V,” though this was deliberately and effectively an extension of stage techniques. Knighthood and later a peerage confirmed public acclaim for his talents and energy, constantly directed at widening appreciation of the theatre and access to the plays of Shakespeare and other great playwrights of the past and, no less important, the work of contemporaries. Part of Lord Olivier’s accomplishment as an actor lay in the meticulous attention to detail he applied in his roles. There was a realism in his portrayals which brought out the human aspects of the characters he played and made them plainer to audiences. In some ways he was ahead of his time because he broke with the tradition of speaking Shakespeare’s verse with contrived modulations in favour of speaking in a plainer way. Early critics of his productions marvelled at his portrayals but lamented that he could not speak verse. Later, when the German school of acting was imported into' Britain, it was realised that Laurence Olivier had long been using some of the same techniques. , For his time, he was bold as an actor, daring to portray some characters usually played with bravado and toughness as characters having a less macho side. He played an lago who nursed a homosexual desire for Othello. His reinterpretations of characters provided an excitement for theatre-goers and, happily, some of his splendid screen productions have captured for good some of the magic in his performances. The tremendous diversity of his roles was not matched by some fine actors who, in Shakespeare alone, might be considered his superior. 11l health restricted him in later years, but it did not stop him. As Henry V or as the broken-down song-and-dance man in “The Entertainer,” or as a director and promoter of theatre he should be rated as a genius who won the respect of mass audiences as well as of the most discerning critics and fellow professionals.