At the Old Vic in 1956 he directed John Neville and Claire Bloom in "Romeo and Juliet", a production later given on Broadway. He joined the company as an actor later in the year, playing Shylock, Launce in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona", Saturnius in "Titus Andronicus" and the title role in "Richard III". During 1957 Helpmann played the title role in Jean-Paul Sartre's "Nekrassov", and then took over the lead part of Sebastien in Coward's comedy "Nude with Violin" in London. The role had been created by John Gielgud, who had been succeeded, not altogether satisfactorily, by Michael Wilding. Helpmann's vitality revived the spirits of the company, and the play continued its run into the following year. Helpmann toured Australia in the piece in 1958–59, after he had returned to ballet for a season at Covent Garden in "The Rake's Progress", "Hamlet", "Coppélia", "Miracle in the Gorbals" and "Petrushka". His performance in the last of these was not well received: in the role of a lovelorn puppet, he was seen as too overtly human and intelligent. At the start of the 1960s Helpmann worked mostly in non-ballet theatre, forgoing the opportunity to create the role of the Widow Simone in Ashton's "La fille mal gardée" in favour of directing Vivien Leigh and Mary Ure in Jean Giraudoux's play "Duel of Angels" on Broadway. In 1962 he performed again for Australian audiences in another Old Vic company, this time headed by Vivien Leigh, which appeared in the Far East, South America and Australia. In 1963 he choreographed his sixth work for The Royal Ballet, the short-lived and critically damned "Elektra", with music by Malcolm Arnold and featuring Nadia Nerina, David Blair, Monica Mason and Derek Rencher. He also supervised a new production of "Swan Lake" for the company, with important new choreographic contributions from Ashton. In the same year he played Prince Tuan in the film "55 Days at Peking". In 1962 Peggy van Praagh, formerly of Sadler's Wells, launched a new company, the Australian Ballet, which, Sorely Walker writes, steadily gained ground as "a company full of lively young Australian talent, helped along by top-level international stars like Erik Bruhn, Rudolf Nureyev, and Sonia Arova."