During 1957 Gielgud directed Berlioz's "The Trojans" at Covent Garden and played Prospero at Drury Lane, but the production central to his career over the late 1950s and into the 1960s was his one-man show "The Ages of Man". He first appeared in this in 1956 and revived it every year until 1967. It was an anthology of Shakespearean speeches and sonnets, compiled by George Rylands, in which, wearing modern evening clothes on a plain stage, Gielgud recited the verses, with his own linking commentary. He performed it all over Britain, mainland Europe, Australasia and the US, including a performance at the White House in 1965. He found there were advantages to performing solo: "You've no idea how much easier it is without a Juliet. When there's a beautiful girl above you on a balcony, or lying on a tomb with candles round her, naturally the audience look at her the whole time, and Romeo has to pull out all the stops to get any attention." His performance on Broadway won him a Special Tony Award in 1959, and an audio recording in 1979 received a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album. He made many other recordings, both before and after this, including ten Shakespeare plays.