ABSTRACT
In 1949 Olivier led the company to Australia and New Zealand while Richardson paused to make two films. Lord Esher, chair of the governors, perhaps in response to the hostility of Tyrone Guthrie or Llewellyn Rees, noticed a certain falling away in Box Office receipts and took advantage of his stars’ absence to refuse to renew their contracts and bring in a less brilliant but more malleable regime. This idealism was opposed to the reality of the West End, which, according to Arthur Miller, was ‘hermetically sealed against the way the society moves’. It was controlled by a group of monopolistically inclined entrepreneurs known as ‘The Group’. London theatre also survived beyond the West End. In the post-war period a surprising number of ‘alternative’ theatres, often employing less traditional production methods, survived, though they often wanted their plays transferred to the West End.
