Kenneth Tynan theatre critic until mid-1963 when he joined the National Theatre. In 1963, Laurence Olivier became the British National Theatre Company's first artistic director. Tynan had been highly dismissive of Olivier's achievements as artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre, which had opened in 1962, but he recommended himself for the role of literary manager. Olivier was initially outraged by Tynan's presumption but Olivier's wife, Joan Plowright, convinced him that Tynan would be an asset at the National Theatre Company, then based at the Old Vic theatre. When he became the National Theatre's literary manager, Tynan ceased to be the theatre
The Old Vic minor theatres, enacted in Parliament earlier that year. On 1 July 1833, the theatre was renamed the Royal Victoria Theatre, under the "protection and patronage" of Victoria, Duchess of Kent, mother to Princess Victoria, the 14-year-old heir presumptive to the British throne. The duchess and the princess visited only once, on 28 November of that year, but enjoyed the performance, of light opera and dance, in the "pretty...clean and comfortable" theatre. The single visit scarcely justified the "Old Vic" its later billing asf "Queen Victoria's Own Theayter". By 1835, the theatre was advertising itself simply as the Victoria Theatre. In