Olivier winners Leanne Jones and Michael Ball
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The Broadway musical
Hairspray continued its long march on London’s West End, winning four prizes—the most of the night—at the 2008 Laurence Olivier Awards, honoring the best of the preceding year in theater and also opera and dance. The ceremony on an unseasonably cold, windswept evening at the city’s Grosvenor House was marked by buoyancy and good cheer inside the Great Room, not least as the Tony-winning musical proved that this is one Broadway hit that can cross the Atlantic in triumph.
“What a lovely thing the Shaftesbury curse is; I’ll just say that, “ said the show’s co-lyricist Scott Wittman, referring to the much-vaunted reputation of Hairspray’s chosen home, the Shaftesbury, as London’s house of flops: both The Who’s Tommy and the original London incarnation of Rent are among that venue’s financial casualties. But on this night, at least, it seemed as if its luck had changed. The show is on course to pay back its $9-million-plus West End cost by May, prompting best actor in a musical winner Michael Ball to enthuse from the podium about “watching the Shaftesbury Theatre come back to life—it’s been a long time coming.”
Ball won in what was, perhaps surprisingly, the West End vet’s first-ever Olivier nod. And repeating the Tony laurels in New York for original Broadway leads Harvey Fierstein and Marissa Jaret Winokur, the Turnblads, mother and daughter, were both victorious in London, too—Ball’s Edna taking best actor (“I was actually hoping for Best Actress,” he deadpanned. “Life sucks”), while 22-year-old newcomer Leanne Jones won for playing that singularly perky and untroubled teenager, Tracy.
And in the longest and feistiest acceptance speech of the night, previous Olivier winner Tracie Bennett scored again, this time nabbing the supporting player in a musical trophy for her deliciously vampy Velma in Hairspray—some 13 years after she had won in this category for her role in Scott Ellis’ London incarnation of She Loves Me. Bennett took time to toss a choice expletive in the direction of someone in the audience who was apparently encouraging shorter speeches. She went on to extol her fellow nominees, especially Shaun Escoffery from the ceremony’s major also-ran, Parade, which was nominated seven times but didn’t win once. “If I could share this with you, mate, I would,” said Bennett from the podium, “because you’re fabulous.”
The Best Actor and Actress in a Play prizes were both up for grabs, though the distaff category might have been assumed to be Anne-Marie Duff’s to lose. (The Saint Joan star was accompanied by her husband, Atonement’s James McAvoy, in a reversal from the Oscar night scenario of several weeks ago, where he was the main occasion and she the devoted spouse.) Saint Joan did win two prizes—for play revival and sound—but in the event, the actress prize went to Kristin Scott Thomas, easily the best of the many Arkadinas in Chekhov’s The Seagull that have surfaced in London of late (three, to be precise). The radiant star took the opportunity to announce news of Ian Rickson’s production re-assembling for a Broadway perch in September. Her Trigorin in that production, Chiwetel Ejiofor, won perhaps the night’s most hotly contested prize: Best Actor in a Play, with Ejiofor’s resplendent, richly spoken Othello trumping Ian McKellen’s Lear and Patrick Stewart’s Broadway-bound Macbeth, among other players. In a droll speech, Ejiofor ended by thanking his agents for “their brilliant taste, frankly.”
Nicholas Hytner’s National Theatre updating last winter of the George Etherege comedy The Man of Mode won the supporting performer in a play award for the fast-rising Rory Kinnear, who thanked costume designer Vicki Mortimer “for making me look funny, so I didn’t have to try.” Mortimer won her own Olivier for costumes, while the set prize went to Rae Smith and the Handspring Puppet Company for War Horse. That production, one of the National’s most successful ever, might have been thought to be a lock for co-directors Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris in the directing category. But in the end, Rupert Goold prevailed for his well-traveled Macbeth, with Stewart in the title role. Goold’s speech paid tribute along the way both to his wife, Kate Fleetwood, the show’s Lady Macbeth, as well as the man without whom, as Goold pointed out, none of this would indeed have been possible—one William Shakespeare. Goold gets his chance for a grab at a Tony in June when the production reopens on Broadway in April at the Lyceum Theatre.
It’s astonishing that the balcony overlooking the Great Room is still standing after the ecstatic whoops and cheers from its own company that followed the musical revival prize to English director Mark Dornford-May’s African reworking of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. (That, in turn, meant no trophies at all for the long-running Henry Goodman-led revival of Fiddler on the Roof.) “You can see what it’s been like rehearsing,” beamed Dornford-May, as his cast let rip from the sidelines. He went on to acknowledge a 35-strong ensemble from the South African townships, “five or six [of whom],” he said, “have never been on the stage before.”
In a variation on that same notion of actually getting to the stage, the often-nominated Howard Harrison, winner of the lighting design prize for Macbeth, joked that he was beginning to feel as if “I would always be the bridesmaid”—and fell prey to the nuttiest musical accompaniment of the night, with the orchestra setting his trip to the podium for one of the Bard’s bloodiest tragedies to the tune of the 1930s Cole Porter song, “It’s De-Lovely.”
Easily the night’s loopiest win got a speech to match: Toby Sedgwick taking the choreography prize for War Horse over Jerry Mitchell’s glorious gyrations for Hairspray—surely the Olivier panel knows the difference between choreography and movement? (Then again, Simon McBurney won in this category in 1998, the same season as the West End opening of the revival of Chicago). Sedgwick met the absurdity head on, whinnying not just once but twice while remarking, “That’s thank you very much in horse... I didn’t prepare anything because, I thought, this is ridiculous.” Ridiculous in a rather more genuinely eccentric way was the pairing of presenters that found Barbara Windsor, the bosomy onetime Carry On film name, sharing the chores with Speed-the-Plow’s visiting Hollywood star, Jeff Goldblum, who must be about three times the British actress’s height—not that she looked in any way displeased.
In a departure from Richard Wilson at the podium in years past, the emcee chores this time fell to Richard E. Grant, who was at least able to share in the Best Actress prize along with Scott Thomas, with whom Grant appeared in the film Gosford Park. Elsewhere, he was quick to disavow any connection to jokes that didn’t land—many of them at the expense of The Lord of the Rings (“a mere 27 hours of stage time”)—and to claim responsibility for the ones that did, though one quip, “like Daniel Radcliffe’s trousers, we have a lot packed into this evening,” went unclaimed.
The live entertainment was of a sufficiently high level that one lamented yet again the fact that the Oliviers are no longer televised. In addition to the usual roster of songs from the nominated shows, the Society of London Theatre’s Special Award to Andrew Lloyd Webber, 60 this year, led to the inevitable musical tribute in which Connie Fisher and Lee Mead were more or less blown away by Lloyd Webber’s recent Eva Peron, Elena Roger, who performed an Argentinian-inflected rendition of “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” from Sunset Boulevard. How about a special Olivier for her, please?
Here is a complete list of winners:
BEST NEW MUSICAL
Hairspray
BEST NEW PLAY
A Disappearing Number by Simon McBurney
BEST NEW COMEDY
Rafta Rafta by Ayub Khan-Din based on All in Good Time by Bill Naughton
BEST REVIVAL
Saint Joan by Bernard Shaw
BEST MUSICAL REVIVAL
The Magic Flute - Impempe Yomlingo
BEST ACTOR
Chiwetel Ejiofor, Othello
BEST ACTRESS
Kristin Scott Thomas, The Seagull
BEST PERFORMANCE IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Rory Kinnear, The Man of Mode
BEST NEWCOMER IN A PLAY
Tom Hiddleston, Cymbeline
BEST ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL
Leanne Jones, Hairspray
BEST ACTOR IN A MUSICAL
Michael Ball, Hairspray
BEST PERFORMANCE IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MUSICAL
Tracie Bennett, Hairspray
BEST DIRECTOR
Rupert Goold, Macbeth
BEST THEATRE CHOREOGRAPHER
Toby Sedgwick, War Horse
BEST LIGHTING DESIGN
Howard Harrison, Macbeth
BEST SET DESIGN
Rae Smith and Handspring Puppet Company, War Horse
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Vicki Mortimer, The Man of Mode
BEST SOUND DESIGN
Paul Arditti with music by Jocelyn Pook, Saint Joan
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVMENT IN AN AFFILIATE THEATRE
Gone Too Far at the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court
BEST NEW OPERA PRODUCTION
The Royal Opera’s Pelléas et Mélisande
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN OPERA
Natalie Dessay for her performance in La Fille du Régiment
BEST NEW DANCE PRODUCTION
The Royal Ballet’s Jewels
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN DANCE
The Royal Ballet Company for their performances in Jewels
SPECIAL AWARD
Andrew Lloyd Webber