Chichester Festival Theatre leads tributes to Dame Joan Plowright who has died

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As the theatre world mourns the death of Dame Joan Plowright, Chichester Festival Theatre is also remembering a key figure in its very earliest years.

Justin Audibert, CFT artistic director, and Kathy Bourne, CFT executive director, are leading the city’s tributes to Dame Joan.

They said: “Dame Joan Plowright was so intimately connected with Chichester Festival Theatre’s history from its earliest days that it’s hard to imagine the theatre without her. Among her most memorable roles here were Sonya in Uncle Vanya with her husband, Laurence Olivier in our opening seasons in 1962 and 1963; Katharina in The Taming of the Shrew opposite Anthony Hopkins in 1972; as Edith Cavell in Cavell in 1982; Lady Wishfort in The Way of the World (with Maggie Smith) in 1984; and the title role in Saint Joan in 1963. 50 years later, she performed an extract from Saint Joan for the National Theatre’s 50th anniversary gala in 2013.

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“Dame Joan was one of the supreme actors of her generation; we in Chichester were privileged that several of her most memorable performances were on the Festival Theatre stage. They, and she, will live long in our memories. We send our deepest sympathies to her family and friends.”

Dame Joan, who has died at the age of 95, was one of the country’s most distinguished stage and screen stars and the widow of Sir Laurence Olivier. She married Laurence Olivier in 1961 after starring opposite him in The Entertainer. The next year both were in Chichester as the Festival Theatre opened its doors.

In a foreword to Chichester Festival Theatre at Fifty – A Celebration by Kate Mosse (2012), Dame Joan wrote: “On March 17 1961 I was married to Laurence Olivier and we were living in New York, both acting in plays on Broadway – he in Becket and I in A Taste of Honey – when the letter arrived. It came from an optician in Chichester who said he was about to build a theatre and would Sir Laurence consider becoming its first artistic director. Neither of us knew Chichester and at any other time in the life of a world-famous actor/director such a request would have elicited only a polite refusal. However, by a million-to-one chance this seemingly impossible shot in the dark found its target. It caught Larry at the moment he had started saying ‘what can I find that is new and challenging?’ and came, as he described it, ‘like God’s gift from heaven’.”

Theatre founder Leslie Evershed-Martin (1903–1991) famously had a tricky relationship with Olivier. He recalled “Olivier and I had many tussles, mainly because although we both wanted an uncompromising agreement on standards for our theatre, which were not always hallowed in other theatres, he had a healthy distrust of the opinion of anyone who did not depend on the theatre for a living.”

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But they established a working rapport, and as the building rose, “visiting the site became a local pilgrimage for the populace,” he remembered – a populace soon tantalised. On January 10 1962, Olivier announced his first season – a nine-week festival comprising The Chances, The Broken Heart and Uncle Vanya, with a cast to include Sir Lewis Casson, Fay Compton, Joan Greenwood, Keith Michell, John Neville, Sir Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright, Sir Michael Redgrave, Athene Seyler and Dame Sybil Thorndike, with Olivier directing all three plays and appearing in the last two. The building was finished on May 3 1962, and on June 4 Olivier welcomed the actors to Chichester. Evershed-Martin was ecstatic: “I told them we had aimed at the stars, but had never expected the whole firmament.” On July 5 1962, the theatre opened “‘home and dry’ with the full amount of £110,000 collected in cash or grossed up covenants” and with a first night which could have sold out three times over.

Dame Joan returned the following year, appearing alongside Frank Finlay, Robert Stephens, Jeremy Brett, Derek Jacobi and Norman Rossington in 1963 in Shaw’s Saint Joan.

Frank Finlay recalled: “Saint Joan and The Workhouse Donkey were the second season, and it was wonderful. It was so exciting when we were all asked to go to Chichester. Olivier had started the first season with Uncle Vanya, and between him doing the first and the second he was offered the directorship of the National. The second season was really a try-out for lots of actors. It was Olivier’s way of preparing himself for running a company for the National.”

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