OLIVIER AWARDS – Best Supporting Winners

OLIVIER AWARDS – Best Supporting Winners

Best Performance in a Supporting Role

2009 Patrick Stewart for Hamlet
2008 Rory Kinnear for The Man Of Mode
2007 Jim Norton for The Seafarer
2006 Noma Dumezweni for A Raisin In The Sun, Young Vic
2005 Amanda Harris for Othello
2004 Warren Mitchell for The Price

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

2011 Michelle Terry for Tribes
2010 Ruth Wilson for A Streetcar Named Desire
2002 Marcia Warren for Humble Boy
2001 Pauline Flanagan for Dolly West’s Kitchen
2000 Patricia Hodge for Money
1997 Deborah Findlay for Stanley
1995 Dora Bryan for The Birthday Party
1994 Helen Burns for The Last Yankee
1993 Barbara Leigh-Hunt for An Inspector Calls
1992 Frances de la Tour for When She Danced
1991 Sara Crowe for Private Lives
1984 Marcia Warren for Stepping Out
1983 Abigail McKern for As You Like It
1982 Anna Massey for The Importance Of Being Earnest
1981 Gwen Watford for Present Laughter
1980 Suzanne Bertish for Nicholas Nickleby
1979 Doreen Mantle for Death Of A Salesman
1978 Elizabeth Spriggs for Love Letters On Blue Paper
1977 Mona Washbourne for Stevie

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

2011 Adrian Scarborough for After the Dance
2010 Eddie Redmayne for Red
2002 Toby Jones for The Play What I Wrote
2001 Ben Daniels for All My Sons
2000 Roger Allam for Money
1997 Trevor Eve for Uncle Vanya
1995 Ken Stott for Broken Glass
1994 Joseph Mydell for Perestroika
1993 Julian Glover for Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2)
1992 Oleg Menshikov for When She Danced
1991 David Bradley for King Lear
1984 Edward Petherbridge for Strange Interlude
1983 Alan Devlin for A Moon For The Misbegotten
1982 David Healy for Guys And Dolls
1981 Joe Melia for Good
1980 David Threlfall for Nicholas Nickleby
1979 Patrick Stewart for Antony And Cleopatra
1978 Robert Eddison for Twelfth Night
1977 Nigel Hawthorne for Privates On Parade

Best Supporting Performance

2003 Essie Davis for A Streetcar Named Desire
1999 Brendan Coyle for The Weir
1998 Sarah Woodward for Tom & Clem
1996 Simon Russell Beale for Volpone
1989/90 Michael Bryant for Hamlet, The Voysey Inheritance and Racing Demon
1988 Eileen Atkins for Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale and Mountain Language
1987 Michael Bryant for King Lear and Antony And Cleopatra
1986 Paul Jesson for The Normal Heart
1985 Imelda Staunton for A Chorus Of Disapproval and The Corn Is Green
1976 Margaret Courtenay for Separate Tables

Best Performance in a Supporting Role in a Musical

2011 Jill Halfpenny for Legally Blonde – The Musical
2010 Iwan Rheon for Spring Awakening
2009 Lesli Margherita for Zorro
2008 Tracie Bennett for Hairspray
2007 Sheila Hancock for Cabaret
2006 Celia Imrie for Acorn Antiques – The Musical!
2005 Conleth Hill for The Producers
2004 The Chorus of Jerry Springer – The Opera
2003 Paul Baker for Taboo
2002 Martyn Jacques for Shockheaded Peter
2001 Miles Western for Pageant
2000 Jenny Galloway for Mamma Mia!
1999 Shuler Hensley for Oklahoma!
1998 James Dreyfus for Lady In The Dark
1997 Clive Rowe for Guys And Dolls
1996 Sheila Gish for Company
1995 Tracie Bennett for She Loves Me
1994 Sara Kestelman for Cabaret
1993 Janie Dee for Carousel
1992 Jenny Galloway for The Boys From Syracuse
1991 Karla Burns for Show Boat

No Man's Land Review

NO MAN’S LAND. The Duke of York’s Theatre.

As Briggs describes a route involving an intricate one-way system, with unfathomable twists and turns, it soon becomes clear that his directions lead to a kind of no man’s land. ‘This trip you’ve got in mind,’ he says, ‘drop it, it could prove fatal.’

The speech could be a metaphor for the play itself though its two central characters. Hirst (Michael Gambon – pictured), a successful, well-heeled poet and essayist, and Spooner (David Bradley), a dishevelled, impecunious poet manque Hirst picks up at a pub near Hampstead Heath and invites back for a drink, have their own definitions of ‘no man’s land.’ It never changes, never moves, never grows older. But which remains forever icy and silent.

The play’s narrative thrust could not be simpler. After Hirst invites Spooner into his luxurious home (courtesy of designer Giles Cadle) dominated by a well-stocked bar, Spooner attempts to ingratiate himself with his wealthy host hoping that an on-going friendship might be of benefit to him.

What he has not reckoned with, however, is the menacing presence of Foster (David Walliams) and Briggs, incipient thugs who may or may not be lovers, and whose job is to make sure their boss is protected from leeches like Spooner. They succeed.

The idea of a derelict stranger imposing on the hospitality of another was, of course, explored by Pinter in The Caretaker, his first major success. Indeed, No Man’s Land borrows, in mood and atmosphere, quite liberally from several of the playwright’s earlier pieces – notably The Birthday Party and The Homecoming.

Particularly mysterious is the ambiguity that exists between Hirst and Spooner. Could they actually have once known each other at Oxford and have even been friends?

The play’s second comic set-piece, in which the pair exchange a series of long-past social reminiscences involving names like Lord Lancer (‘He’s not one of the Bengal Lancers, is he?’ enquires Briggs), Burston-Smith, Bunty Winstanley, and Doreen Busby, suggests a once-intimate association.

The play also broke new grounds for Pinter. For the first time, his protagonist is a man of means and, like Pinter himself, a poet.

Fascinating, too, is that Spooner, despite having his eye clearly on the main chance, brings a whiff of life into a house literally plunged into darkness. Briggs and Foster, on the other hand, would appear to be waiting for Hirst to die – which, as the play ends, he seems to be doing.

When No Man’s Land was first performed in 1975, John Gielgud played Spooner and Ralph Richardson was Hirst – a double act hard to forget, even harder to follow, and pointless to compare with succeeding casts.

Gambon’s glazed introspection as he peers silently into the middle-distance contemplating ‘the last lap of a race I had long forgotten to run’, is extraordinarily moving and contrasts brilliantly with his stealthier more buoyant moments when, after a good night’s sleep, he bounds into view with an energy and a sprightly playfulness (albeit short-lived) unseen until this point.

Bradley’s crumpled, delusional Spooner whose every wrinkle speaks of failure and failed potential, is very moving too, a muted cello to Gambon’s periodic, trumpet-like outbursts.

Walliams and Dunning are appropriately sinister as Hirst’s manservants, and exude a homoerotic frisson echoed in a production by wunderkind Rupert Goold, that never allows the play’s fair share of laughter to upstage the darkness at its heart.

CLIVE HIRSCHHORN. Courtesy of This Is London.

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