his first connection with the old vic was during the 1944 season when the company, owing to enemy action, had been forced to relocate to the new theatre (now the noël coward theatre) where benthall directed a production of "hamlet" jointly with tyrone guthrie. benthall provided the scenario for two ballets by arthur bliss: "miracle in the gorbals" (1944), and "adam zero" (1946). he was the artistic director of the old vic between 1953 and 1962, and produced all of the shakespeare plays in the first folio over five years.