Monthly Archives: December 2011
The 12th What’sOnStage.com Awards shortlist
So I went to the 12th What’sOnStage.com Awards’ nomination launch party. Here’s the scoop!
David Tennant and Catherine Tate’s Much Ado About Nothing pairing nominated for Theatre Event of the Year.
Legends Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones both up for Best Actress and Best Actor for Broadway transfer of Driving Miss Daisy.
James Corden, Kristin Scott Thomas, Tamsin Greig, Jude Law, Kevin Spacey, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ruth Wilson, Sheridan Smith, Arthur Darvill, Amanda Holden, Nigel Harman, Mark Gattiss, Richard Fleeshman, Tara Fitzgerald, Simon Callow, Matt Lucas, Alfie Boe, Ruby Wax, Reece Shearsmith, Sarah Lancashire and Daniel Kitson receive performance nods.
Blockbusters Matilda and Ghost – both directed by Matthew Warchus – go head to head with 9 nominations each, including Best New Musical and London Newcomer of the Year for Matilda’s Tim Minchin.
Ecstasy and Grief: Mike Leigh up for Best Play Revival and Best New Play.
The National leads the way with 22 nominations, including five for One Man, Two Guvnors and four for Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein.
The shortlist of nominations for the 12th annual Whatsonstage.com Awards were revealed yesterday at a star-studded launch party at London’s Café de Paris. The Awards from the UK’s leading theatre website are the only UK event for the theatre industry voted for purely by the ticket-buying public. More than 11,000 theatregoers have cast nominations for their favourite performances and productions across 26 different award categories.
A major year for musicals
In the battle of the big musicals, screen-to-stager Ghost the Musical goes head-to-head with the RSC’s musical adaptation of Matilda, which opened in the West End after a sell-out season at Stratford-upon-Avon, with both grabbing nine nominations each.
In addition to competing for the Best New Musical, the shows’ stars are running neck and neck in all the musical performance categories: Best Actor in a Musical (Ghost’s Richard Fleeshman vs Matilda’s Bertie Carvel), Best Actress in a Musical (Caissie Levy vs the four young girls who alternate as Matilda), Best Supporting Actor in a Musical (Andrew Langtree vs Paul Kaye) and Best Supporting Actress in a Musical (Sharon D Clarke vs Lauren Ward).
The two blockbusters share key members of their creative teams with Matthew Warchus (Best Director) and Rob Howell (Best Designer) duly nominated for their work on both productions. Matilda’s composer and lyricist, comedian Tim Minchin, is also singled out for London Newcomer of the Year for his musical debut.
Several of the year’s other big musicals are also nominated, including Crazy for You, Betty Blue Eyes (with six apiece), Rock of Ages, Shrek the Musical (with five apiece) and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s production of The Wizard of Oz (with four).
Also in the running for Best Actress in a Musical are: Amanda Holden (Shrek), Clare Foster (Crazy for You), Emma Williams (Love Story) and Sarah Lancashire (Betty Blue Eyes). Additional Best Actor in a Musical nominees are: Nigel Lindsay (Shrek), Oliver Tompsett (Rock of Ages), Reece Shearsmith (Betty Blue Eyes) and Sean Palmer (Crazy for You).
Les Miserables, which won three awards in the 2011 Awards for its 25th anniversary celebrations, receives three nominations for the 2012 Awards: co-stars Alfie Boe and Matt Lucas (who reprised their O2 birthday gala performances in a limited West End season this year) compete for Best Takeover in a Role, and the Cameron Mackintosh production battles other long-runners Jersey Boys, The Phantom of the Opera, War Horse, We Will Rock You and Wicked for Best West End Show bragging rights.
The play’s the thing
Waving the flag for big-hitter plays are the Donmar Warehouse’s revival of Anna Christie and the National’s One Man, Two Guvnors, with five nods each. One Man’s James Corden (a two-time host of the Whatsonstage.com Awards in 2008 and 2009) and Anna Christie’s Jude Law are both nominated for Best Actor in a Play, one of this year’s toughest fields, where the other nominees are Benedict Cumberbatch (Frankenstein), Kevin Spacey (Richard III), David Tennant (Much Ado About Nothing, Wyndham’s) and James Earl Jones (Driving Miss Daisy).
One Man, Two Guvnors is also tipped for Best New Comedy and earns nominations elsewhere for Jemima Rooper (Best Supporting Actress), Oliver Chris (Best Supporting Actor) and Nicholas Hytner (Best Director). And Anna Christie is shortlisted for Best Play Revival and Best Supporting Actor (David Hayman), while its leading lady Ruth Wilson faces stiff competition from Eve Best (Much Ado About Nothing, Globe), Kristin Scott Thomas (Betrayal), Samantha Spiro (Chicken Soup with Barley), Vanessa Redgrave (Driving Miss Daisy) and Tamsin Greig (Jumpy), who won this past year’s Whatsonstage.com Best Supporting Actress prize for The Little Dog Laughed.
Richard Bean (One Man Two Guvnors and The Heretic) is one of two playwrights nominated in two different categories. His Royal Court play, The Heretic, is up for Best New Play, competing with Grief, the latest stage play by Mike Leigh, whose Hampstead production of his 1976 play Ecstasy is shortlisted for Best Play Revival.
Sheridan Smith, who last year won the Whatsonstage.com and Olivier Best Actress in a Musical gongs for Legally Blonde, is nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Play for Flare Path. Hers is one of four nods for Flare Path, including Best Play Revival and Best Director for Trevor Nunn, who has overseen this year’s full in-house programme at the Theatre Royal Haymarket and is jointly nominated for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Big names, big events
This summer’s West End production of Much Ado About Nothing, reuniting Doctor Who’s David Tennant and Catherine Tate, caused such a stir that it has been nominated for Theatre Event of the Year, as well as Best Director (for Donmar Warehouse artistic director-in-waiting Josie Rourke) and Best Actor for Tennant. The 1980s-set Much Ado battles it out with Jeremy Herrin’s period production of the same play (and opened just a week earlier) at the Globe for Best Shakespearean Production.
The always-eclectic Theatre Event of the Year category also pays tribute to the RSC’s 50th anniversary season and reopening of its Royal Shakespeare Theatre home after a four-year, £112 million makeover. Other events in the running are: the Bush Theatre’s 24-hour cycle of 66 Books, Michael Sheen and Bill Mitchell’s The Passion for the National Theatre of Wales, Headlong’s 9/11 milestone Decade and The Phantom of the Opera’s 25th anniversary spectacular at the Royal Albert Hall.
The London Newcomer of the Year shortlist fields wide-ranging nominees from across plays and musicals. In addition to Tim Minchin for Matilda, there is Danielle Hope (The Wizard of Oz), X Factor winner Shayne Ward (Rock of Ages), musician-turned-actor Johnny Flynn (The Heretic), former EastEnder-cum-Strictly Come Dancing victor Kara Tointon (Pygmalion) and Kyle Soller (The Glass Menagerie, Government Inspector and The Faith Machine).
Other big names on this year’s shortlists include: Danny Boyle (nominated for Best Director for his return to the stage with Frankenstein), Catherine Tate (Best Supporting Actress for Season’s Greetings), Mark Gatiss (Best Supporting Actor for Season’s Greetings), Doon Mackichan (Best Supporting Actress for Jumpy), Niamh Cusack (Best Supporting Actress for Playboy of the Western World), Tara Fitzgerald (Best Takeover in a Role, Broken Glass) and outgoing Donmar boss Michael Grandage (Best Director for King Lear and Luise Miller).
Voting to crown the winners opened yesterday and will close at the end of January 2012. The winners will be revealed at the Awards Concert on 19 February 2012 at the West End’s Prince of Wales Theatre. Last year more than 46,000 theatregoers voted for their favourites. The Whatsonstage.com Awards are held in association with our 2012 presentation rights sponsor Time Out London in aid of this year’s adopted charity, Stage One, which is dedicated to developing the theatre producers of the future.
I’m backing Ruby Wax for Best Solo Performance in Losing It at the Menier Chocolate Factory & Duchess as well as ZooNation‘s Kate Prince for Best Choreographer for Some Like It Hip Hop, which is also nominated for Best Ensemble Performance. So, what are you waiting for? Get voting!
