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When Laurence Olivier and Peter Brook locked horns over Seneca's tragedy at Britain's National Theatre, their feud became as legendary as the production
IN MARCH 1968, PETER BROOK MADE HIS National Theatre debut with Seneca's Oedipus. The production has been unjustly filed under "comedy" in theatrical folklore, thanks to three endlessly recycled one-liners: two improvised in rehearsal by John Gielgud, who played the title role; the third by an audience member on opening night. It merits more serious examination, for revealing disharmony within the National, and a huge gulf between Brook and Laurence Olivier.
The pair's complex history stretched back to 1953 and Brook's first feature film, The Beggar's Opera. Starring as Macheath, Olivier felt John Gay's masterpiece called for "18th-century elegance and artificiality...grace and charm"; to Brook, "the work breathed the stinking air of Hogarth... it needed to be violent and harsh." Olivier tried to have him fired; the film set became a battlefield. "Between us," Brook reflected, "we spoiled much of the picture," which fared so badly at cinemas that it would be years before British movie producers offered him another job. "When you flop to the time of a quarter of a million pounds, you have to do penance until the people concerned forget you or die off," we said.
In 1955, rehearsing with Olivier in the title role of Titus Andronicus in Stratford, Brook surprisingly found "latent feuds" from The Beggar's Opera transmuted into "perfect harmony"; they advanced "on parallel rails...in mutual confidence," and delivered an interpretation of such power that critics reevaluated a play dismissed by T. S. Eliot as "one of the stupidest and most uninspiring" ever written. In 1961, Peter Hall asked Olivier if he would play King Lear for Brook at the Royal Shakespeare Company. "I do want to do Lear again," he replied, "but this...would be one of those rare instances in which I would not be entirely happy about Peter directing...This may sound ungrateful after Titus, but my reasons germinate more from his production of Hamlet [in 1955], another great play which does not need 'saving' more than Titus or Measure \for Measure, in 1950], which certainly benefited by the dear boy's saving grace... I have produced the play myself once and would like...