by Nathaniel R
Jessie Buckley & Eddie Redmayne at the Olivier Awards yesterday
On Sunday across the pond the West End's Olivier Awards were held at the Royal Albert Hall. Since Broadway and the West End are on different schedules despite cross pollination you can sometimes get clues as to what future shows might be big at the Tony Awards and which Broadway shows have transferred well to London. Regarding the latter, London got two high profile Broadway transfers this season, the 2011 Sutton Foster led revival of Cole Porter's Anything Goes and the 2019 musical adapation of Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! both of which won multiple Tony Awards in their seasons. In stark contrast, they took only one prize each at the Oliviers. Disney's Frozen also lept across the pond but, just as it had in NYC, it received a few courtesy nominations but no wins.
The big Olivier winners were a new play based on the book/movie Life of Pi using actor operated puppets for the animals and yet another revival of Kander & Ebb's eternally thrilling Cabaret...
This production of Cabaret starred Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne (winning his second Olivier Award) and recent Oscar nominee Jessie Buckley.
Life of Pi seems like a no brainer for a Broadway transfer. As for Cabaret, it played NYC as recently as 2015 so it's not what you'd call urgent as a revival prospect (and both actors are frequently employed and thus hard to pin down) but you never know!
COMPLETE LIST OF WINNERS (THOUGH YOU CAN WATCH THE WHOLE SHOW AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST IF YOU'D LIKE)
Sheila Atim takes Best Actress
NEW PLAY Life of Pi
COMEDY/ENTERTAINMENT PLAY Pride and Prejudice* (*Sort of)
PLAY REVIVAL Constellations
ACTRESS Sheila Atim, Constellations
Sheila Atim has been having a quite a run of late. She receiving a Rising Stars honor for four films at TIFF. She was double nominated at the recent NAACP Image Awards for her supporting work in both Barry Jenkins' Underground Railroad and Halle Berry's Bruised. Later this year she has supporting roles in two potentially major films, the Viola Davis vehical The Woman King as well as Robert Zemeckis's take on Pinocchio starring Tom Hanks as Gepetto.
ACTOR Hiran Abeysekera, Life of Pi
SUPPORTING ACTRESS Liz Carr, The Normal Heart
SUPPORTING ACTOR Seven actors (who play the tiger), Life of Pi
NEW MUSICAL Back to the Future: The Musical
MUSICAL REVIVAL Cabaret
ACTRESS Jessie Buckley, Cabaret
ACTOR Eddie Redmayne Cabaret
SUPPORTING ACTRESS Liza Sadovy, Cabaret
SUPPORTING ACTOR Elliot Levey, Cabaret
DIRECTOR Rebecca Frecknall, Cabaret
COSTUME DESIGN Catherine Zuber, Moulin Rouge: The Musical
SOUND DESIGN Nick Lidster, Cabaret
ORIGINAL SCORE OR ORCHESTRATIONS Simon Hale (orchestrations) Get Up, Stand Up, The Bob Marley Musical
CHOREOGRAPHER Kathleen Marshall, Anything Goes
SET DESIGN Tim Hatley (design) and Finn Caldwell (puppets) Life of Pi
LIGHTING DESIGN Tim Ludkin and Andrzej Goulding, Life of Pi
ACHIEVEMENT IN OPERA Peter Whelan and the Irish Baroque Orchestra for Bajazet at Royal Opera House
NEW OPERA Jenûfa, Royal Opera House
ACHIEVEMENT IN DANCE Arielle Smith, choreography of Jolly Folly in Reuionn by English National Ballet
NEW DANCE Revisor, Crystal Pite and Jonathan Young, Kidd Pivot at Sadler's Wells
ACHIEVEMENT IN AFFILIATE THEATRE Old Bridge at Bush Theatre
FAMILY SHOW Wolf Witch Giant Fairy
You can watch the whole awards show in person right here if you have three hours to spare. Or if you just have a few minute at 39:50 you can see a five minute scene from Life of Pi. At 1:23:20 you can see Sutton Foster introducing a performance from "Anything Goes" (but she's on Broadway again now in The Music Man so Kerry Ellis performs Sutton's role). At 1:55:55 you can see a performance from the West End cast of Moulin Rouge! The Musical. At 2:21:00 Eddie Redmayne introduces a performance from Cabaret