Helen Mirren actors to achieve the “Triple Crown of Acting”, joining the ranks of legends including Ingrid Bergman‚ Dame Maggie Smith, and Al Pacino. In 1998, Mirren played Cleopatra to Alan Rickman's Antony in "Antony and Cleopatra" at the National Theatre. The production received poor reviews; "The Guardian" called it "plodding spectacle rarely informed by powerful passion", while "The Daily Telegraph" said "the crucial sexual chemistry on which any great production ultimately depends is fatally absent". In 2000 Nicholas Hytner, who had worked with Mirren on the film version of "The Madness of King George", cast her as Lady Torrance in his
Noël Coward Theatre Eyre, with Donald Sinden as Sir Harcourt Courtly, (for which he received the 1975 Drama Desk Special Award) Roger Rees as Charles, Judi Dench as Grace and Dinsdale Landen as Dazzle, transferred to the New Theatre in 1972 for a year, prior to its 1974 run in New York. In 1981, "Children of a Lesser God" won Olivier Awards for Best New Play and for actors Trevor Eve and Elizabeth Quinn. Among some of the 1980s productions is the 1994 revival of Turgenev's "A Month in the Country" starring Helen Mirren and John Hurt. In the 2000s the theatre has