The critic Ivor Brown thought that Scofield's performance as Alexander, though excellent, owed something to the example of Laurence Olivier. In January 1950 Olivier and his wife Vivien Leigh took over the management of the theatre. They opened with Christopher Fry's new play, "Venus Observed", in which Leigh did not appear. In 1951, for the Festival of Britain season, they starred in Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra" and Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra". Duncan observes, "The company was as brilliant as it was enormous." In addition to the Oliviers it included Robert Helpmann, Richard Goolden, Wilfred Hyde White and Peter Cushing among the men, and their female colleagues included Elspeth March, Maxine Audley and Jill Bennett.