As I've noted before, Towers tended to scoop up actors who were desperate for work, but that doesn't seem quite true in this instance - Theatre Royal was hosted by Laurence Olivier, who definitely didn't need to scrape around for work. Mind you, although he hosted every episode, Olivier didn't act in all of them. The first few episodes each opened with Olivier assuring listeners that he'd eventually appear in a starring role.
So Towers might have been paying good money for Olivier, but he saved money by using public domain stories. Some of them are the same sort Nelson Olmsted or the Weird Circle dramatized (ie, Balzac's "La Grande Breteche," Stevenson's "Queen of Spades," Wells' "the Country of the Blind") but others are stories seldom heard on radio - Wilde's "Lord Saville's Crime," Gogol's "the Overcoat," Conrad's "the Black Mate."
When Olivier wasn't starring, the lead roles went to pretty good performers: Orson Welles, Robert Donat, Michael Redgrave and Alec Guinness.
In the back half of the series, Ralph Richardson took over as the host (and usually lead performer) of the series. As in other programs Towers produced, I find Ralph Richardson is underwhelming as a radio performer. He didn't enunciate clearly; the back half of Theatre Royal is consequently less-interesting to listen to.
The Old Time Radio Researchers have their collection of Theatre Royal episodes on the Internet Archive.
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