Theatre Royal. The very name summons up something of grandeur and eloquence. And it had been. Hosted by Laurence Olivier, these big-name productions also included the creme de la creme of acting abilities from John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, and Orson Welles to Trevor Howard, Michael Redgrave and Olivier himself. These were based on functions by the worlds’ leading writers, among them Charles Dickens, Henry Wayne, Oscar Wilde and Anton Chekhov. They are but a few of whose business we shall end up being keeping even as we raise the drape on our initial instalment of theatrical history.