“Now. A box set here of Olivier’s three Shakespeare adaptations. As a drama student, these are the kind of things you kind of think, “Well, what… what did the greatest Shakespearean actor of all time, how did he do it? What were his choices?” Obviously, they are slightly from a different time. Expectations about acting were slightly different, and Olivier himself was a kind of grand man of the theater. So these three – Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III – they’re a little dated now, in some ways, and yet there’s something in the essence of what he did and how he uses that language. And he made it… For his time, Olivier was doing new things by speaking that verse in a very naturalistic way, by making it kind of sexy and raw. And I feel very lucky that we have these three movies, because, of course, most of that work that he did was on stage, was live. It disappeared on the night that he performed it. But we have these to get a glimpse into what that was, to why Olivier was regarded as the greatest Shakespearean of all time. There are moments in these films where the clouds part and the light pours through and you see something very, very special.”
