Theatre Royal. The name summons up something of grandeur and eloquence. And it was. Hosted by Laurence Olivier, these big-name productions also included the creme de la creme of acting skills 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, included in this Charles Dickens, Henry Wayne, Oscar Wilde and Anton Chekhov. They are but some of whose company we shall become keeping once we raise the curtain on our initial instalment of theatrical background.