Terry Coleman: The Old Vic

Our latest Faber Podcast is about a building – The Old Vic theatre on London’s South Bank, and the subject of a new book by journalist and writer Terry Coleman, whose many previous books include the authorised life of Laurence Olivier. Dating back almost two centuries the Old Vic is an institution that holds a place in national cultural life with few rivals – all the more surprising when you bear in mind it’s not a state-funded enterprise. The Old Vic has had to forge its own identity over the years, and the story Terry tells is full of highs and lows, triumphs and disasters, characters much larger than life – on and off-stage. ‘Theatre thrives on legends,’ he writes, and that is abundantly so in the case of the Old Vic.