Sacked

At London theatrical parties last week Sir Laurence Olivier fluttered his hand in mock turtle despair. "Sacked, old boy, sacked," he said. "Left without a job."

The sacking part was true. London's famed Old Vic repertory theater had fired its directing triumvirate: Olivier, Sir Ralph Richardson and Designer Director John Burrell. The board of governors had announced "an administrative reorganization." Official reason: the Old Vic will have "bigger responsibilities" next summer when it sets up a British National Theater. A member of the governing board admitted that the official statement was malarkey. "If I told the real truth, some people's feelings might be hurt."

The Old Vic owed its postwar rejuvenation largely to Olivier and Richardson, who were its big drawing cards. But both of them have spent most of the last two seasons elsewhere, in the cinema or touring. And the Old Vic, like any other repertory theater, is losing money. This season only one of four shows got warm praise.

This week the Old Vic's governors were to announce the appointment of a single administrator, Walter Llewellyn Rees, a shrewd businessman who is drama director of the government's Arts Council. To handle the artistic end, they will name 35-year-old Hugh Hunt, an alumnus of Broadway and Dublin's Abbey Theater, who has directed Bristol's successful offshoot Old Vic since 1945.

At the same time the governors will disclose that Olivier has been invited to produce and act in the Old Vic's 1950-51 season. Olivier is ready to accept, on one condition: Richardson and Burrell must be invited back too.

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