Olivier Award nominations 2010
Feature by Lizzie Guilfoyle
THE OLIVIER Award nominations for 2010 have been announced and Frank Wedekind’s 1891 masterpiece of repressed emotion and adolescent passion, Spring Awakening, has gleaned a total of seven.
They include Best New Musical, Best Actress and Best Actor in a Musical or Entertainment for Charlotte Wakefield and Aneurin Barnard, and Best Supporting Performance in a Musical or Entertainment for Iwan Rheon.
As expected, both the Royal Court and Donmar Warehouse have done well, although this year, the Royal Court has come out on top with a grand total of 15 nominations, among them Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem and Headlong’s production of Lucy Prebble’s Enron, each with six.
Following her success at the Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle Awards, it should come as no surprise to learn that the Donmar’s ten nominations include Best Actress for Rachael Weisz for her performance as Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.
Here she’s up against Gillian Anderson for A Doll’s House, also at the Donmar; Lorraine Burroughs for The Mountaintop; Imelda Staunton for Entertaining Mr Sloane; and Juliet Stevenson for Duet for One.
Meanwhile, Best Actor is being contested by Jude Law for Hamlet; James McAvoy for Three Days of Rain; Mark Rylance for Jerusalem; Ken Stott for A View from the Bridge; and Samuel west for Enron.
On the musical front, Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, directed by Trevor Nunn, has received five nominations. They include Best Musical Revival, Best Actress and Actor in a Musical or Entertainment for Hannah Waddingham and Alexander Hanson; and Best Supporting Actress in a Musical or Entertainment for Maureen Lipman.
Other productions with multiple nominations include A View from the Bridge, Sister Act and Hello Dolly! with four apiece; A Streetcar Named Desire, Three Days of Rain, Burnt by the Sun, The Misanthrope, Red, Oliver! and Priscilla Queen of the Desert – The Musical with three; and The Mountaintop, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Hamlet, The Priory and England People Very Nice with two.
And the National Theatre has picked up nine nominations.
Winners of the 34th annual Olivier Awards will be announced on Sunday, March 21, 2010 in a ceremony held at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane.
See the full list of winners or read our report of the ceremony