 In 1951 Leigh and Laurence Olivier performed two plays about Cleopatra , William Shakespeare 's Antony and Cleopatra and George Bernard Shaw 's Caesar and Cleopatra , alternating the play each night and winning good reviews . They took the productions to New York , where they performed a season at the Ziegfeld Theatre into 1952 . The reviews there were also mostly positive , but the critic Kenneth Tynan angered them when he suggested that Leigh 's was a mediocre talent that forced Olivier to compromise his own . Tynan 's diatribe almost precipitated another collapse ; Leigh , terrified of failure and intent on achieving greatness , dwelt on his comments and ignored the positive reviews of other critics . 
