by The piece of giant, who portrays the children’s author Roald Dahl in the middle of a rushing of his anti -Semitism, triumphed at the Olivier Awards at a night in the Royal Albert Hall in London.
The US star John Lithgow won the best actor award for his performance as Dahl, Elliot Levey won the best supporting actor (for the publisher Tom Maschler) and Mark Rosenblatt received the award for the best new game.
Giant is Rosenblatt’s debut as a playwright and in March brought him a double victory with critics Circle Theater Awards, where he won for the most promising playwright and the best new piece. Giant ran at the Royal Court in London last year and will be broadcast later this month to the west end, with Lithgow and Levey resuming their roles.
Lithgow thanked the audience for “welcomed me in England” and said: “It is not always easy when they welcome an American in their midst” and emphasized that this moment was “more complicated than usual” for relationships between the USA and Great Britain.
He remembered that he had seen Laurence Olivier’s “amazing performance” at the old Vic in the Play Dance of Death in the late 1960s. “I thought of him and stolen from him in almost every performance I have ever played on stage,” he added.
The balance of Giant’s Three Olivier Awards on Sunday evening was coordinated by two musicals: the strange case of Benjamin Button and Geiger on the roof.
The former, based on the short story of F SCOTT Fitzgerald and with music and texts by Jethro Compton and Darren Clark, won the best new musical, outstanding musical contributions (for Clark and Mark Aspinall’s orchestratations and arrangements) and the best actor in a musical (John Dagleish as hero, which is an old heroism every day). Dagleish, who won an Olivier Award in 2015 because he had portrayed Ray Davies on Kink’s musical, sunny afternoon, said his deceased mother was on this occasion his “plus one”. He dedicated the award to her and said that “she had loved” the strange case of Benjamin Button.
It was staged in the Fringe event location Southwark Playhouse and is now running in the ambassador of West End, which recently opened its own, tailor-made pub on site, the pickled crab, named after a Kornische water hole in the musical.
Fiddler on the Roof, which received a five-star Guardian Review in Regent’s Park Open Air Theater and moved to the Barbican next month, had received a total of 13 olive nominations, which corresponds to a record that was set up by the Musical Hamilton in 2018.
The classic musical – composed by Jerry Bock with texts by Sheldon Harnick and Book by Joseph Stein – won nine Tony Awards for his original Broadway production in 1965. The new production of director Jordan Fein won Oliviers for the best musical revitalization, the best set design (Tom SCutt) and the best sound design (Nick Lidster).
The ceremony, which celebrates the cream of the London theater, was organized by the actors Beverley Knight, a winner of the 2023 Awards, and Billy Porter, who plays as a moderator in Cabaret. It opened with Knight and Porter, which played luck, to be a lady of the musical boys and dolls.
Romola Garai achieved the unusual performance of beating itself in order to gain the award for the best actress in a supportive role. She had been nominated twice in this category and recognized her achievements in giants and in the years.
The latter brought their victory. Based on the Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux ‘memoirs, the years (in the Almeida Theater) also received the best director prize, with the Norwegian theater maker Eline Arbo becoming the sixth woman who won this award at the Oliviers.
Garai said the years had been the “greatest privilege of my life” and thanked “my family of Annies”. [all the cast share the main role of Annie as well as playing supporting characters]. She called Arbo a “genius” that “brought the lives of all women on stage”. Garai also thanked her husband for his support while taking the two productions.
Arbo previously headed the years for the International Theater Amsterdam, the world -famous company, which also organized Robert Icte’s modern version of Sophocles Oedipus a few years ago.
Oedipus, which Icke led with a new West End line -up, won the best revival and the best actress for Lesley Manville as Jocasta.
Icke praised his “24-carat team”, including the producer Sonia Friedman, of whom he said, the industry was “lucky enough to have it”. (Garai also thanked Friedman, who produced the years.) Icke added the experience of making Oedipus happy for the ensemble for the ensemble, who jokingly observed that “incest really brings people together”. Manville noticed Icke’s “care and precision” as a director in her speech.
The award for the best actress in a musical went to Imelda Staunton to reduce her roof in Hello, Dolly! in the palladium. It was Staunton’s 14th nomination and the fifth victory at the Oliviers. The most solved person in the history of Olivier Awards is the lighting designer Paule Constable, who received 17 nominations and won her sixth prize for Oliver! (shared with Ben Jacobs). Constable announced her retirement from the theater at the beginning of this year.
The prize for the best theater choreographer went to Christopher Wheeldon, the musical Michael Jackson Bio-Drama MJ, the best costume design for Gabriella Slade for the colorful roller skating trains in Starlight Express, and Maimuna Memon took over the award for the best actress in a supporting roll in a musical for Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet from 1812.
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Layton Williams has now been the first Olivier winner of the story to be recognized for the representation of an iceberg (he took the best secondary actor in a musical for Zany Titanique). Mark-Anthony Turnage Festival in the Royal Opera House won two prices: the best new opera production and outstanding performance in the opera (for tenor Allan Clayton).
The National Theater, the Old Vic and the Colosseum were among the most important venues, whose nominations of shows did not lead to a victory, although Rufus Norris received a special award for his 10-year term as director of the National.
The Olivier Awards founded in 1976 are supervised by the Society of London Theater. The winners are selected by a team of industry numbers, stage lights and theater lovers to the public.
