Old Vic Theatre

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Old Vic Theatre, London, in the Cut, off the Waterloo Road. At first called the Royal Coburg, after the husband of Princess Charlotte, it opened in 1818 with a melodramatic spectacle by William Barrymore, Trial by Battle; or, Heaven Defend the Right, based on a recent notorious murder trial. The journey across the river was too hazardous for a fashionable audience, but a series of melodramas of the most sensational kind soon attracted a large local audience, particularly as the plays were well staged with well-known actors. In 1833 the theatre was redecorated, reopening with a revival of Jerrold's Black-Ey'd Susan, being renamed the Royal Victoria Theatre in honour of Princess (later Queen) Victoria. It soon became affectionately known as the Old Vic, but its standards noticeably declined and it finally sank to the level of a penny gaff. The audience was very rough, and in 1858 16 people lost their lives in a panic due to a false alarm of fire. In 1871, after a short period as a music-hall, the theatre closed. It was sold by auction and renamed the New Victoria Palace. This closed early in 1880, and the building was then bought by Emma Cons, a social worker and the first woman member of the London County Council, with the intention of turning it into a temperance music-hall. Renamed the Royal Victoria Hall and Coffee Tavern, it opened in 1880 under the management of William Poel, who remained until 1883. Intended as a place of inexpensive family entertainment, it prospered in spite of initial misgivings, much helped by the support of a Bristol MP, Samuel Morley, whose efforts to promote the arts in South London included the founding of Morley College which for a time occupied part of the building. In 1900 the first full length opera, Balfe's The Bohemian Girl, was given, and scenes from Shakespeare were introduced into the concert programmes. In 1912 Emma Cons's niece Lilian Baylis, who had been assisting her aunt since 1898, took over and two years later presented the first full Shakespeare season. It was successful enough to warrant further productions of his plays, in spite of the outbreak of war later that year, and in the next nine years all the plays in the First Folio were performed, the completion of the project, with a staging of Troilus and Cressida in 1923, coinciding with the tercentenary of its first publication. Ben Greet was in charge of productions from 1915, during which time Sybil Thorndike played most of Shakespeare's heroines and some of his heroes. In 1927 the LCC insisted on the theatre's closure for urgent and essential alterations. The company moved to the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, and returned in 1928 with a performance of Romeo and Juliet. In 1931 Lilian Baylis opened the renovated Sadler's Wells Theatre, and mixed seasons of opera, ballet, and drama alternated between the two theatres. This proved impracticable, and two years later it was decided to use Sadler's Wells for opera and ballet and the Old Vic for drama. A succession of fine actors, among them John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, and Ralph Richardson, made the theatre famous.

The Old Vic closed on the outbreak of war in 1939; it reopened a year later, but was badly damaged by bombing in 1941 and closed again, the company moving to the New Theatre (now the Albery). Repaired and redecorated, it reopened in 1950 with Twelfth Night. Between 1953 and 1958 a ‘five-year’ plan resulted in a second presentation of the 37 plays in the First Folio, opening with Richard Burton in Hamlet and ending with Gielgud, Edith Evans, and Harry Andrews as Wolsey, Katharine, and the King in Henry VIII. The Old Vic had from early times presented some plays by dramatists other than Shakespeare, and two interesting works produced in 1962 were Ibsen's Peer Gynt and Guthrie's modernized version of Jonson's The Alchemist. Later that year it was decided that the theatre should house the National Theatre's company under Laurence Olivier pending the erection of their own theatre, and in June 1963, after a final performance of Measure for Measure, the theatre closed. It reopened on 22 Oct. (after extensive alterations) with the National Theatre company in Hamlet, starring Peter O'Toole, the other actors being mainly from the Chichester company, which was also under the direction of Olivier. G. B. Shaw's Saint Joan and Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, both transferred from Chichester, followed, the latter proving one of the company's most successful achievements in ensemble acting. The first notable revival was Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer, and the first foreign play Max Frisch's Andorra. Shakespeare's Quatercentenary was celebrated in 1964 by Olivier in Othello, possibly the most controversial tour de force of his career. The company's first world première was Peter Shaffer's The Royal Hunt of the Sun. In the seasons that followed the company's greatest successes were with comedy, particularly with Feydeau's A Flea in Her Ear (1965). In 1967 Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead introduced a new playwright of considerable talent, while the classics were prominent with an interesting all-male As You Like It and Molière's Tartuffe, with Gielgud. The abortive attempt by the company's literary manager Kenneth Tynan to introduce Hochhuth's controversial play Soldiers into the repertory, and the extension in 1970 of the company's activities to West End theatres while the Old Vic was let to visiting companies, attracted some adverse criticism in spite of the excellence of some of the plays. The return to the Old Vic was generally welcomed, Scofield giving an excellent comic performance in Zuckmayer's The Captain of Köpenick in 1971, and old and new plays being equally successful, with a revival of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, also in 1971, Stoppard's Jumpers in 1972, and Molière's The Misanthrope and Shaffer's Equus in 1973. The last play to be staged under Olivier's management was Trevor Griffiths's The Party, after which Peter Hall took over, and in 1974 staged a varied repertory in anticipation of the move to the National Theatre, ending with Pinter's No Man's Land (1975). The last production before the move took place on 28 Feb. 1976 was a special charity performance of Tribute to the Lady, a celebration of the life and work of Lilian Baylis. A year later the theatre, which was being used by the Old Vic Youth Theatre (which retained its headquarters there until 1982), became the London home of the Prospect Theatre Company, which changed its name to the Old Vic Company in 1979. In 1981 the company was forced to disband and the theatre was bought by a Canadian entrepreneur and handsomely refurbished, reopening in 1983 with limited runs of its own productions, such as Racine's Phèdre in 1984 with Glenda Jackson. It staged the RSC's production of the musical Kiss Me, Kate in 1987, and in 1988 Jonathan Miller was appointed Artistic Director, presenting seasons of European and British classics until 1990. The musical Carmen Jones, based on Bizet's Carmen, had its London première there in 1991.