Jay Laurier

[4] Christmas 1907 saw him in the pantomime Mother Goose as Jack opposite the dame of Wilkie Bard at the Prince of Wales Theatre in Birmingham.

[5] In 1922 he played Miffins in the pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk at the Hippodrome, London opposite George Robey as Dame Trot.

[2] He joined the company of The Old Vic in 1937 for whom he played Alfred Doolittle in Pygmalion[1] before joining the company of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1938 for whom he played Launce in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1938), Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1938 and 1942), Touchstone in As You Like It (1929–1942), First Gravedigger in Hamlet (1940 and 1942), Porter in Macbeth (1938 and 1942), Pompey in Measure for Measure (1939–1940), Gardener in Richard II (1941), Sir John Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1940), Autolycus in The Winter's Tale (1942), Christopher Sly The Taming of the Shrew (1939–1942), Stephano in The Tempest (1938–1942) and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night (1941).

[12][13] Laurier played Christopher Sly in The Taming of the Shrew,[14] Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing[15] in the Stratford Shakespeare season at the Kingsway Theatre in London.

In 1945 he gave an acclaimed cameo performance as the jailer Frosch in Gay Rosalinda at the Palace Theatre in London.