Noël Coward in the context of "Maggie Smith"

Sir David Lean CBE (25 March 1908 – 16 April 1991) was an English filmmaker and editor, widely considered one of the most important figures of British cinema. He directed the large-scale epics The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Ryan's Daughter (1970), and A Passage to India (1984). He also directed the film adaptations of Charles Dickens novels Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), as well as the romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945).

Originally a film editor in the early 1930s, Lean made his directorial debut with 1942's In Which We Serve, which was the first of four collaborations with Noël Coward. Lean began to make internationally co-produced films financed by the big Hollywood studios, beginning with Summertime in 1955. The critical failure of his film Ryan's Daughter in 1970 led him to take a fourteen-year break from filmmaking, during which he planned a number of film projects which never came to fruition. In 1984, he had a career revival with A Passage to India, adapted from E. M. Forster's novel. This was a hit with critics, but it proved to be the last film that Lean directed.

Vivien Leigh (/liː/ LEE; born Vivian Mary Hartley; 5 November 1913 – 8 July 1967), styled as Lady Olivier after 1947, was a British actress. After completing her drama school education, Leigh appeared in small roles in four films in 1935 and progressed to the role of heroine in Fire Over England (1937). She then won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, for her performances as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had also played on stage in London's West End in 1949. For the latter role, she also won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. She also won a Tony Award for her work in the Broadway musical version of Tovarich (1963).

Despite her fame as a screen actress, Leigh was primarily a stage performer. During her 30-year career, she played roles ranging from the heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth. Later in life, she performed as a character actress in a few films. Although her career had periods of inactivity, in 1999 the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Leigh as the 16th-greatest female movie star of classic Hollywood cinema. Also lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that her physical attributes sometimes prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress.

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier (/ˈlɒrəns ˈkɜːr əˈlɪvieɪ/ LORR-ənss KUR ə-LIV-ee-ay; 22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989) was an English actor and director. He and his contemporaries Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud made up a trio of male actors who dominated the British stage of the mid-20th century. He also worked in films throughout his career, playing more than fifty cinema roles. Late in his career he had considerable success in television roles.

Olivier's family had no theatrical connections, but his father, a clergyman, decided that his son should become an actor. After attending a drama school in London, Olivier learned his craft in a succession of acting jobs during the late 1920s. In 1930 he had his first important West End success in Noël Coward's Private Lives, and he appeared in his first film. In 1935 he played in a celebrated production of Romeo and Juliet alongside Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft, and by the end of the decade he was an established star. In the 1940s, together with Richardson and John Burrell, Olivier was the co-director of the Old Vic, building it into a highly respected company. There his most celebrated roles included Shakespeare's Richard III and Sophocles's Oedipus.

Rachel Hannah Weisz (/vaɪs/; born 7 March 1970) is an English actress. Known for her roles in independent films and blockbusters, she has received several awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Laurence Olivier Award. Films in which she has appeared have grossed over $3.5 billion worldwide.

Weisz began acting in stage and television productions in the early 1990s, and made her film debut in Death Machine (1994). She won a Critics' Circle Theatre Award for her role in the 1994 revival of Noël Coward's play Design for Living, and went on to appear in the 1999 Donmar Warehouse production of Tennessee Williams' drama Suddenly Last Summer. Her film breakthrough came with her starring role as Evelyn Carnahan in the Hollywood action films The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001). Weisz went on to star in several films of the 2000s, including Enemy at the Gates (2001), About a Boy (2002), Runaway Jury (2003), Constantine (2005), The Fountain (2006), Definitely, Maybe (2008), The Lovely Bones (2009) and The Whistleblower (2010).

Dame Edith Mary Evans (8 February 1888 – 14 October 1976) was an English actress. She was best known for her work on the West End stage, but also appeared in films at the beginning and towards the end of her career. Between 1964 and 1968, she was nominated for three Academy Awards.

Evans's stage career spanned sixty years, during which she played more than 100 roles, in classics by Shakespeare, Congreve, Goldsmith, Sheridan and Wilde, and plays by contemporary writers including Bernard Shaw, Enid Bagnold, Christopher Fry and Noël Coward. She created roles in two of Shaw's plays: Orinthia in The Apple Cart (1929), and Epifania in The Millionairess (1940) and was in the British premières of two others: Heartbreak House (1921) and Back to Methuselah (1923).

His Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre situated in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster, London. The building, designed by Charles J. Phipps, was constructed in 1897 for the actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) at the theatre. In the early decades of the 20th century Tree produced spectacular productions of Shakespeare and other classical works, and the theatre hosted premieres by such playwrights as Bernard Shaw, J. M. Synge and, later, Noël Coward and J. B. Priestley. Since the First World War the wide stage has made the theatre suitable for large-scale musical productions, and His Majesty's has accordingly specialised in hosting musicals. It has been home to record-setting musical theatre runs such as the First World War hit Chu Chin Chow and Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, which has run at His Majesty's since 1986, except during the COVID-19 pandemic theatre closures.

The first theatre on the site was established in 1705 by the architect and playwright John Vanbrugh as the Queen's Theatre. Legitimate drama unaccompanied by music was prohibited by law in all but the two London patent theatres, and the theatre quickly became an opera house. Between 1711 and 1739 more than 25 operas by George Frideric Handel premiered here. The theatre burnt down in 1789, and a new theatre was completed in 1791. Some of Joseph Haydn's series of concerts in London took place at the theatre in the 1790s. In the early 19th century the theatre was home to an opera company (which moved to the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, in 1847) presenting the first London performances of Mozart's La clemenza di Tito, Così fan tutte and Don Giovanni. It also hosted the ballet of Her Majesty's Theatre in the mid-19th century, before returning to opera with the London premieres of such works as Bizet's Carmen and Wagner's Ring cycle. A third building was constructed in 1868.