 In May 1936 Olivier and Richardson jointly directed and starred in a new piece by J. B. Priestley , Bees on the <unk> . Both actors won excellent notices , but the play , an allegory of Britain 's decay , did not attract the public and closed after four weeks . Later in the same year Olivier accepted an invitation to join the Old Vic company . The theatre , in an <unk> location south of the Thames , had offered inexpensive tickets for opera and drama under its proprietor Lilian <unk> since 1912 . Her drama company specialised in the plays of Shakespeare , and many leading actors had taken very large cuts in their pay to develop their Shakespearean techniques there . Gielgud had been in the company from 1929 to 1931 , and Richardson from 1930 to 1932 . Among the actors whom Olivier joined in late 1936 were Edith Evans , Ruth Gordon , Alec Guinness and Michael Redgrave . In January 1937 he took the title role in an uncut version of Hamlet , in which once again his delivery of the verse was <unk> compared with that of Gielgud , who had played the role on the same stage seven years previously to enormous acclaim . The Observer 's Ivor Brown praised Olivier 's " magnetism and <unk> " but missed " the kind of pathos so richly established by Mr Gielgud " . The reviewer in The Times found the performance " full of vitality " , but at times " too light ... the character slips from Mr Olivier 's grasp " . 
