box-office success and closed after 188 performances. In 1961 Thorndike played the longest part of her career, the title role in Hugh Ross Williamson's Teresa of Avila, about the eponymous saint. She thought it "the most thrilling part I've been offered since Saint Joan", but Williamson's script, even after extensive revision by Casson, proved disappointing. Reviews were enthusiastic in their praise of Thorndike's performance, but neither the critics nor the public liked the play, which closed after six weeks. In 1962 Olivier, as director of the Chichester Festival, mounted a production of Uncle Vanya. He assembled a cast headed by Michael Redgrave in the title role, supported by Olivier (as Astrov), Fay Compton, Joan Greenwood and Joan Plowright, in addition to Thorndike as Marina, the nurse, and Casson as Waffles. The critic J. C. Trewin wrote of "the most remarkably complete production – in my experience at least – of any play in our period". He called Thorndike's nurse "a miracle of gruff tenderness". The production was acknowledged as the highlight of the festival, and was revived the following year. Between the two stagings Thorndike appeared for the first time in a musical – playing the formidable Miss Crawley in an adaptation of Thackeray's Vanity Fair. The piece received bad reviews. The Guardian said that at her age Thorndike "should have known better than be caught up in this piece of prolonged nonsense", although The Times found consolation in her "blazingly theatrical figure" who "stamps every line with comic authority". Olivier moved from Chichester to become the founding director of the National Theatre in late 1963. He included Uncle Vanya in his first season, with many of his Chichester cast reprising their roles, but Casson, by this time in his late eighties, declined, and Thorndike did likewise. At the Duchess Theatre in January 1964 she appeared as the Dowager Countess of Lister in William Douglas-Home's play The Reluctant Peer, a comic fictionalisation of the author's elder brother's recent renunciation of his peerage so as to be eligible for the premiership. Once again, Thorndike's notices were better than those for the play. Bernard Levin wrote, "she gets her fangs deep into the meatiest part she has had for years" and praised "the relish and zest she brings to her playing". She thought the critics were wrong to dismiss the play – "they only want avant-garde and classics now" – and was