On Sunday night, the Olivier Awards — Britain’s equivalent to the Tonys — took place in London. As expected, “Sunset Boulevard” took home the most trophies (and will have a Broadway run later this year), but there were also some surprise winners. Matt Wolf and Houman Barekat, The New York Times’s London theater critics, joined the reporter Alex Marshall to discuss the winners, the snubs and the last year in British theater.
Jamie Lloyd’s stripped-back “Sunset Boulevard,” starring Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond, took home seven awards. Do you think it deserved to dominate?
ALEX MARSHALL I saw “Sunset Boulevard” from the cheapest of cheap seats in the back row, but it was still my most memorable night in a theater last year. I’m not surprised that Andrew Lloyd Webber responded to the show’s wins by writing on X that it was “a highlight of my career.”
For me, the only downside to its sweep is that Nicholas Hytner’s “Guys and Dolls” failed to win any major awards (it picked up one for choreography). If Lloyd’s reimagining of “Sunset” was brutal and stark, Hytner’s revamp was all exuberance and joy.
MATT WOLF I loved everything about “Sunset Boulevard,” so, yes, I do think it deserved to dominate. That said, it must have been galling for the “Guys and Dolls” company to open that show to universal raves last spring, only to have “Sunset” come along and blindside them. The radical daring of Lloyd’s “Sunset” doesn’t happen every day, and “Guys and Dolls” was the unfortunate victim of that fact.
In a competitive category, best actor went to Mark Gatiss for his turn as the revered actor and director John Gielgud in “The Motive and the Cue.” What made Gatiss’s performance stand out?
WOLF Its heart. Plenty of people have caught Gielgud’s distinctively fluty voice and patrician air, but Gatiss was the emotional anchor of a play that connected with audiences who may have had no idea who Gielgud even was.
His win was the single most exciting one of the night for me, since I was sure that prize would go to Andrew Scott for his one-man “Vanya.” Gatiss’s speech was great, too, beginning with a lesson in how to pronounce his surname (it’s a long A, please) and ending with him once more adopting Gielgud’s voice, to brilliant effect.
BAREKAT For me, it was the understated, controlled manner in which he rendered the character’s emotional complexity. Gatiss’s Gielgud is suffering from late-career ennui, but when he’s in his element he’s assured, witty, wryly acerbic. His predicament — which doubles as a metaphor for artistic endeavor in general — is subtly teased out in this seamless modulation between nagging self-doubt and imperious competence. It was an incredibly poised performance, and he was a worthy winner.
Were there any other surprises among the winners?
MARSHALL I was pleasantly surprised to see “Operation Mincemeat” — a comedy about a bizarre World War II plot — take the award for best new musical. It started at the New Diorama, a small London theater, and its success shows tiny productions can still make it big here.
WOLF I totally agree, and you couldn’t have a best musical winner further removed from shows like the 2022 recipient of this category, “Back to the Future,” which essentially exists to prolong a franchise.
I had been rooting for Isley Lynn’s beautiful and mournful play “The Swell” to take the award for achievement in theater away from the West End — but you can’t have everything.
Recently, there has been a run of adventurous directors taking radical approaches to classic Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals — “Sunset Boulevard” in London, “Jesus Christ Superstar” in Amsterdam, “Evita” in Washington. Is this a sign of the enduring popularity of these works?
BAREKAT I’d say it’s a sign of their enduring familiarity. These shows have, to put it in crude marketing terms, considerable brand recognition.
I imagine the average Lloyd Webber fan would be happy enough with conventional treatments, but there’s a whole other stratum of people — critics, sponsors, professional peers — who also need to be wowed in order to cultivate a sense of credibility and keep the brand relevant.
So you have this attempt to straddle different artistic traditions, by rendering essentially popular, mainstream shows with avantgarde-ish frills or a more stripped-down aesthetic. Some musicals don’t really lend themselves to that sort of thing — I found Ivo van Hove’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” a bit bewildering — but the impulse is understandable.
MARSHALL It’ll be interesting to see how long the trend for radical reworkings lasts. In June, Luke Sheppard will unveil a new “Starlight Express” in London, which he has promised will reimagine the 1984 musical. Given that original production had actors on roller skates pretending to be trains, let’s see how much crazier Sheppard can make it.
Sarah Snook won best actress for her one-woman performance of “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” and Andrew Scott was nominated for similarly playing all the characters in “Vanya.” Why do you think one-person plays are having such a current impact, especially as a vehicle for actors who are already recognizable from onscreen roles?
WOLF Producers love one-person ventures as they’re cost-effective and tend to bring home awards, as the Tonys, especially, have proven over the years. Scott and Snook both began in the theater: Scott won his first Olivier in 2005 for Rob Evans’s “A Girl in a Car With a Man,” back when nobody knew who he was. So these plays are a way for newly minted screen stars to remind audiences that they are still theater animals.
BAREKAT These shows are cheaper to put on but they can nonetheless feel high-end because, mathematically, you’re watching an all-star cast.
And audiences do seem to buy into it. A significant proportion of theatergoers (and critics) are sufficiently dazzled by the sheer logistical gumption — it’s a feat of personal stamina as much as acting — that they will overlook certain shortcomings in the artifice of the production.
I’m reminded of that line attributed to Stalin: “Quantity has a quality all of its own.” Well, in “Vanya,” the audience got a hell of a lot of Scott, and for many of them, the feeling of concentrated, one-to-one time with a celebrated actor was probably payoff enough.
In his review of “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” — which won best new entertainment or comedy play — Houman wrote that “the production is lavish to the point of embarrassment” and wondered, “Haven’t television and cinema already got these bases covered?” As more big-budget London productions are based on successful screen franchises, does this question feel relevant more broadly?
WOLF It’s certainly becoming a kind of norm, though you do then hear people asking, quite sensibly, that if a play aspires so obviously to the status of a film, why make a piece of theater from it in the first place?
BAREKAT This connects in really interesting ways with the success of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and even “Dear England” at these awards.
Whatever one thinks of “Stranger Things,” it’s been a commercial hit. Snook’s “Dorian Gray” attracted a lot of people who know and love Snook from her TV work. And “Dear England” drew in lots of soccer fans, many of whom weren’t regular theater people.
The Society of London Theater, which runs the Oliviers, is the trade association for West End theater in London. It makes sense that the industry should want to express its gratitude for shows that have managed — particularly in these straitened times — to pull in audiences from outside the usual theatergoing demographic.
So many brilliant London productions head to New York, including earlier this year “The Effect” at the Shed and later this year, “Sunset Boulevard” at the St. James Theater. Are there any productions from the recent season you feel deserve a New York run?
WOLF Marek Horn’s “Octopolis,” directed by Ed Madden at the Hampstead Downstairs, was a moving and witty two-hander that really did make you feel as if you were sharing the space with an actual cephalopod.
Among the actual nominees, I’d love to see Sophie Okonedo’s “Medea” transfer to New York: Broadway has always loved high-definition acting and Okonedo — already a Tony winner — delivered big-time in this notoriously demanding role.
BAREKAT I was quietly impressed by Jack Thorne’s “When Winston Went to War With The Wireless,” which ran at the Donmar Theater in the summer. The play’s themes — the prerogatives and responsibilities of media in polarized times, the role of propaganda in shaping political reality — are highly pertinent.
I also enjoyed Matthew Dunster’s take on Harold Pinter’s “The Homecoming” at the Young Vic. Some aspects of the story might be a bit jarring to modern sensibilities, but it was grimly captivating and very slickly done.
WOLF On the topic of “Winston,” on Sunday night it was very moving to have the supporting actress Olivier go to Haydn Gwynne from that show, who died last fall and whose two sons elegantly and eloquently represented their mother at the ceremony.
In the last year, there has been lots of grumbling about the high cost of West End theater tickets. How do you think this is affecting London theater?
WOLF The age of the London theater ticket costing triple digits is now well and truly here, though not quite yet at the stratospheric levels that prevail on Broadway, where higher wages across the board have a lot to do with spiraling ticket costs. The good thing about London is that a range of prices does nonetheless seem possible.
MARSHALL As the perception of high prices becomes more prevalent here, British audiences may be less willing to take a risk on new shows. Earlier this month, the producers of Ivo van Hove’s “Opening Night” announced that musical was closing almost two months early, a rarity on the West End.
Hopefully theatergoers put off by West End prices will start heading to smaller venues across London. There’s amazing theater happening at places like The Bush, The Finborough and the Kiln (whose last artistic director, Indhu Rubasingham, has just moved to the National Theater).
Which productions do you expect to be represented at next year’s Oliviers?
WOLF I’m a huge admirer of Patricia Clarkson’s wounding performance in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” at Wyndham’s Theater. There’s also Rachel O’Riordan’s gorgeous Off West End production of the Brian Friel masterwork, “Faith Healer.” This is a tricky play, told entirely in monologues, and this recent revival does it proud.
MARSHALL The surest nomination at next year’s Oliviers seems to be Ian McKellen for his turn as Falstaff in “Player Kings” — Robert Icke’s adaptation of Parts 1 and 2 of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV.” He’s one of Britain’s theatrical greats, aged 84, performing for nearly four hours.
And this summer’s hottest ticket is already Jamie Lloyd’s new take on “Romeo and Juliet,” starring Tom Holland. Can it sweep the board at the Oliviers like “Sunset Boulevard”?