Maggie Smith in
The Lady from Dubuque
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What happened to Maggie Smith?
That's not a question one wakes up to every day but it's been on my mind as I scan the list for the 32nd annual Laurence Olivier Awards, the winners of which will be announced on 9 March (somewhat later than usual) at the Grosvenor House Hotel. I know it was foolish to think that Dame Maggie would get a nod for her career-capping performance in Edward Albee's The Lady From Dubuque: the production was a West End flop and even though Smith garnered personal raves, the competition in that category this year was noticeably tight. But the Oliviers—far more than the Tonys—are famously idiosyncratic, so one had every reason to live in hope; and even the short-lived Broadway premiere of Dubuque nearly 30 years ago got a few Tony nods, despite a far shorter run than Anthony Page's superb West End incarnation managed in the end.
Indeed, what surprises most about this year's Olivier crop is how safe it actually is, given this organization's penchant for stirring the theatrical pot. Remember Return to the Forbidden Planet beating Miss Saigon for best musical in 1990, or, a decade later, Honk! The Ugly Ducking trumping The Lion King? (The joke at the time was that panellists had been unable to get tickets to the Disney blockbuster). Or, most gratifyingly of all, Michael Grandage's searing, soaring London
Laura Michelle Kelly and cast
in The Lord of the Rings
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professional premiere of
Merrily We Roll Along beating ventures from both Cameron Mackintosh (
The Witches of Eastwick) and Andrew Lloyd Webber (
The Beautiful Game) to take the Best New Musical prize in 2001? What's missing this year from the line-up are those eyebrow-raising delights—and howlers, too—that have always separated out the Oliviers. Everyone could have guessed that
Hairspray, Parade and
War Horse would lead the field, as indeed they have. Now watch as
The Lord of the Rings emerges victorious to take the top prize!
The happiest person of all the nominees must be Rob Ashford, who not only put Parade seriously back on the musical map but scored a double nomination for both directing and choreographing the Donmar sellout—no mean feat for what was the busy Ashford's directing debut. And the presence of two Americans out of a director shortlist of four—Hairspray's Jack O'Brien was the other—proves a rather astonishing lack of xenophobia in a season in which many top-rank directors
Rob Ashford
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were bypassed. For my money, the two most remarkable directorial feats of the year came from directors working outside their obvious comfort zones, on productions of classics that have themselves become seminal stagings of those particular plays. I'm referring to Howard Davies's startling reclamation of Gorky's
Philistines, which secured a nod for its witty and wonderful supporting performance from Conleth Hill, and Ian Rickson's
The Seagull. The latter’s superlative cast had to settle in performance terms for a single nod for its sublime leading lady, Kristin Scott Thomas, who by rights should take a prize that will probably go to the National Theatre's feisty, already much-lauded Saint Joan, Anne-Marie Duff. Someone with every right to feel personally shortchanged is the hugely gifted Samuel West, whom I would have shortlisted both for best actor for his performance in
Betrayal and, most certainly, for best director, for transforming
Dealer's Choice from a gifted Patrick Marber debut from a bygone era into a contemporary classic. That production deserves the gong for best revival, which is one of the toughest categories of the night to call.
In a city so rich with fine performances, the acting categories are always going to leave people out—this year not just Maggie Smith but, rather more surprisingly given the raves their show received, Simon Russell Beale and Zoë Wanamaker from the National's sellout Much Ado About Nothing. On the other hand, amid a best actor line-up already rife with Shakespearean star turns, it's entirely understandable that the nominators might have wanted to spread the wealth around a bit. That, in turn, explains the presence of Elling's John Simm, star of one of the few commercial successes of last year, and the always-popular Mark Rylance,
Mark Rylance in Boeing-Boeing
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whose nod for
Boeing-Boeing won't hurt when that comedy reopens on Broadway in the spring, with Rylance alongside an American company. Still, an ideal world would have somehow found room for Charles Dance's visible surrender to grief in the extended revival of
Shadowlands, Tom Hollander and the superb Julian Rhind-Tutt in Joe Penhall's
Landscape With Weapon, and, especially, for Harish Patel from
Rafta, Rafta..., the Ayub Khan-Din rewrite of a Bill Naughton forbear (
All In Good Time) that simply has to take the prize for Best Comedy on merit. As for the winner? With Chiwetel Ejiofor up against two seasoned Bardic heavy hitters in Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, the prize could go any which way, but I can tell you that no Shakespearean performance in my experience in years generated the palpable frisson on press night of Ejiofor's aggrieved and grievous Moor.
Some selections give real cause for cheer. It's nice to see Tarell Alvin McCraney's pungently written, beautifully acted The Brothers Size—a hit late last year for the Young Vic--honoured for outstanding achievement in an affiliate theatre. One wonders at the same time whether room could also have been found for such Young Vic success stories as the startling, fearsomely short Generations, not to mention the New York theatre actress Portia's blazing U.K. stage debut in The Member of the Wedding at that same address. And maybe someday I will get a convincing explanation as to why it is that the Donmar every year features quite happily in the Olivier line-up—indeed, its 13 nods this year represented a new record for the Covent Garden powerhouse— whereas the comparable Almeida does not, even though the Almeida in fact has more seats and is at least as ambitious (if, this past year, not nearly as qualitatively successful).
Looking just at the musicals, potential surprises abound. I can imagine Henry Goodman's manic Tevye trumping Michael Ball's elegantly underplayed Edna Turnblad to take the musical actor prize, if the judges decide Hairspray has won too much elsewhere, though Leanne Jones seems to me to have a lock on the distaff trophy. She's a newcomer with a great voice and clearly abundant heart; what's not to love? (The spoiler there is Sheridan Smith, who redefined for keeps 
Michael Ball as Edna Turnblad
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Little Shop of Horrors's squeaky-voiced suburbanite, Audrey.) And how wonderful to find the robustly sung supporting turn of Shaun Escoffery from Parade included in the supporting actor/actress category, a strong quartet that might result in a second Olivier for previous winner Tracie Bennett, this time for her delicious Velma in Hairspray. One notes with quiet gratification, too, the refusal of the Olivier panel to be swayed by the cheesy amount of attention paid over the past year to reality TV performers via the revivals of Grease and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, neither of which garnered a single nod. And am I the only person in the world who might have liked to have seen some mention of Luke Evans or Denise van Outen from Rent Remixed, recipient of probably the worst set of reviews all year? Probably, but that's the nice thing about the Oliviers—at least in years gone by. No decision is too daft, no winner too far-out. Broadway's Julie White may have praised the Tony voters for being "wacky" when she collected her (much-deserved) Best Actress Award last June. But when it comes to wacky, the Oliviers got there first. Let's hope this year's crop doesn't herald a new era of relative safety, in which case we might as well all go home.