STAGE

Academy Award-winning British actress Dame Peggy Ashcroft was honored in London this week by directors and fellow actors in a gala 80th birthday party. The show at Old Vic Theater, devised by actor Tony Church of the Royal Shakespeare Company, featured excerpts from plays and speeches with which Ashcroft has been associated, and concluded with two standing ovations as she recited the epilogue to Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” “Peggy will be remembered as a great, great actress . . . at a time of great, great acting,” said Sir Peter Hall, the director who called on Ashcroft to help him form the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960.