A report on West End theatre, Laurence Olivier and George Bernard Shaw

The Palace Theatre, in the City of Westminster, London, built in 1891

The London Palladium in Soho opened in 1910. While the Theatre has a resident show, it also has one-off performances such as concerts. Since 1930 it has hosted the Royal Variety Performance 43 times.

The house in Wathen Road, Dorking, Surrey, where Olivier was born in 1907

Shaw's birthplace (2012 photograph). The plaque reads "Bernard Shaw, author of many plays, was born in this house, 26 July 1856".

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Opened in May 1663, it is the oldest theatre in London.

Original interior of Savoy Theatre in 1881, the year it became the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by electricity.

Peggy Ashcroft, a contemporary and friend of Olivier's at the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art, photographed in 1936

William Archer, colleague and benefactor of Shaw

The Lyceum Theatre, home to Disney's The Lion King.

Olivier, with his first wife Jill Esmond (left), in 1932

William Morris (left) and John Ruskin: important influences on Shaw's aesthetic views

Queen's Theatre showing Les Misérables, running in London since October 1985

The Old Vic (photographed in 2012), where Olivier honed his skill as a Shakespearean

Shaw in 1894 at the time of Arms and the Man

The restored facade of the Dominion Theatre, as seen in 2017

Olivier, with Merle Oberon in the 1939 film Wuthering Heights

Gertrude Elliott and Johnston Forbes-Robertson in Caesar and Cleopatra, New York, 1906

The St Martin's Theatre, home to The Mousetrap, the world's longest-running play.

Olivier with Joan Fontaine in the 1940 film Rebecca

Overseas newspaper correspondents visit the set of Henry V at Denham Studios in 1943

Dublin city centre in ruins after the Easter Rising, April 1916

The Royal Court Theatre. Upstairs is used as an experimental space for new projects—The Rocky Horror Show premiered here in 1973.

Co-director and co-star: Ralph Richardson in the 1940s

The rotating hut in the garden of Shaw's Corner, Ayot St Lawrence, where Shaw wrote most of his works after 1906

West End theatres on Shaftesbury Avenue in 2016

Gilbert and Sullivan play at the Savoy in 1881

Victoria Palace Theatre (showing Billy Elliot in 2012) was refurbished in 2017.

Olivier, with Joan Plowright in The Entertainer on Broadway in 1958

"The strenuous literary life—George Bernard Shaw at work": 1904 caricature by Max Beerbohm

Poster for Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, one of two films in which Olivier appeared in 1960

Laurence Olivier in 1972, during the production of Sleuth

In 1930 he had his first important West End success in Noël Coward's Private Lives, and he appeared in his first film.

- Laurence Olivier

Constructed in 1897, Her Majesty's Theatre hosted a number of premieres, including George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion in 1914.

- West End theatre

In 1930, Laurence Olivier had his first important West End success in Noël Coward's Private Lives.

- West End theatre

In the 1890s Shaw's plays were better known in print than on the West End stage; his biggest success of the decade was in New York in 1897, when Richard Mansfield's production of the historical melodrama The Devil's Disciple earned the author more than £2,000 in royalties.

- George Bernard Shaw

After a series of box-office failures, the company balanced its books in 1951 with productions of Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra which the Oliviers played in London and then took to Broadway.

- Laurence Olivier

In 1944 nine Shaw plays were staged in London, including Arms and the Man with Ralph Richardson, Laurence Olivier, Sybil Thorndike and Margaret Leighton in the leading roles.

- George Bernard Shaw

4 related topics with Alpha

Noël Coward

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English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".

Coward (left) with Lydia Bilbrook and Charles Hawtrey, 1911

Coward in The Knight of the Burning Pestle in 1920

Coward with Lilian Braithwaite, his co-star in The Vortex and the mother of his close friend Joyce Carey

Ivor Novello, top l., Alfred Lunt, top r., Lynn Fontanne, lower l. and Judy Campbell – stars of Coward premières of the 1920s–1940s

Coward, with Norman Hackforth at the piano, performing for sailors aboard in Ceylon, August 1944

"Dad's Renaissance": Coward's popularity surged in the 1960s; this poster features Al Hirschfeld's drawing of Coward rather than the stars of this 1968 revival.

Coward in his home in Switzerland in 1972

The Coward image: with cigarette holder in 1930

Coward played in the piece in 1911 and 1912 at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End.

One critic, who noted the influence of Bernard Shaw on Coward's writing, thought more highly of the play than of Coward's newly found fans: "I was unfortunately wedged in the centre of a group of his more exuberant friends who greeted each of his sallies with 'That's a Noëlism!'" The play ran in London from 1 February to 24 March 1923, after which Coward turned to revue, co-writing and performing in André Charlot's London Calling!

In Private Lives, Coward starred alongside his most famous stage partner, Gertrude Lawrence, together with the young Laurence Olivier.

The National Theatre from Waterloo Bridge

Royal National Theatre

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One of the United Kingdom's three most prominent publicly funded performing arts venues, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House.

Axis view of Royal National Theatre to Olivier Theatre fly tower

Detail of the National Theatre showing the grain of the formwork

Denys Lasdun's building for the National Theatre – an "urban landscape" of interlocking terraces responding to the site at King's Reach on the River Thames to exploit views of St Paul's Cathedral and Somerset House.

Laurence Olivier became the first Artistic Director of the National Theatre in 1963. Shown in a photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1939

Facing east; towards the City of London, from Waterloo Bridge. Showing St. Paul's, and other major City buildings – to the right, the illuminated National Theatre.

An artistic lighting scheme illuminating the exterior of the building

The statue of Laurence Olivier as Hamlet was unveiled in September 2007

The terrace entrance between the mezzanine restaurant level and the Olivier cloakroom level, reached from halfway up/down Waterloo Bridge

The ensemble shows a varying range of geometric relationships.

River Thames and Waterloo Bridge, with National Theatre, centre-right

Founded by Laurence Olivier in 1963, many well-known actors have performed at the National Theatre.

In 1910, George Bernard Shaw wrote a short comedy, The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, in which Shakespeare himself attempts to persuade Elizabeth I of the necessity of building a National Theatre to stage his plays.

He went on to take over the Memorial Theatre at Stratford, and to create the permanent Royal Shakespeare Company, in 1960, also establishing a new RSC base at the Aldwych Theatre for transfers to the West End.

Gielgud as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, 1959

John Gielgud

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English actor and theatre director whose career spanned eight decades.

Centre: Marion, Kate and Ellen Terry and, far right, Fred Terry at Ellen's Silver Jubilee matinée, Drury Lane, 12 June 1906. Everyone shown was a member of the Terry family.

Noël Coward with Lilian Braithwaite, his, and later Gielgud's, co-star in The Vortex

Mrs Patrick Campbell and Edith Evans, 1920s co-stars with Gielgud

The Old Vic (photographed in 2012), where Gielgud honed his skill as a Shakespearean

Mabel Terry-Lewis, Gielgud's aunt and co-star in The Importance of Being Earnest

Gielgud in a publicity photograph for Secret Agent (1936)

Gielgud and Dolly Haas in Crime and Punishment, Broadway, 1947

Edmond O'Brien (Casca, left) and Gielgud (Cassius) in Julius Caesar (1953)

Much Ado About Nothing: Gielgud as Benedick and Margaret Leighton as Beatrice, 1959

Gielgud (left) as Joseph Surface, and Ralph Richardson as Sir Peter Teazle, The School for Scandal, 1962

With Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, he was one of the trinity of actors who dominated the British stage for much of the 20th century.

After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art he worked in repertory theatre and in the West End before establishing himself at the Old Vic as an exponent of Shakespeare in 1929–31.

He played Sir Sydney Cockerell, director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, in a representation of a friendship between Cockerell, Bernard Shaw and Laurentia McLachlan, a Benedictine nun.

Royal Court Theatre

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Scene from The Happy Land, showing the scandalous impersonation of Gladstone, Lowe, and Ayrton (1873)

The Royal Court Theatre, at different times known as the Court Theatre, the New Chelsea Theatre, and the Belgravia Theatre, is a non-commercial West End theatre in Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England.

Harley Granville-Barker managed the theatre for the first few years of the 20th century, and George Bernard Shaw's plays were produced at the New Court for a period.

Osborne followed Look Back in Anger with The Entertainer, starring Laurence Olivier as Archie Rice, a play the actor effectively commissioned from the playwright.