OLIVIER AWARDS – Best Actress Winners

OLIVIER AWARDS – BEST ACTRESS WINNERS

Best Actress

2011 Nancy Carroll for After the Dance
2010 Rachel Weisz for A Streetcar Named Desire
2009 Margaret Tyzack for The Chalk Garden
2008 Kristin Scott Thomas for Chekhov’s The Seagull
2007 Tamsin Greig for Much Ado About Nothing
2006 Eve Best for Hedda Gabler
2005 Clare Higgins for Hecuba
2004 Eileen Atkins for Honour
2003 Clare Higgins for Vincent In Brixton
2002 Lindsay Duncan for Private Lives
2001 Julie Walters for All My Sons
2000 Janie Dee for Comic Potential
1999 Eileen Atkins for The Unexpected Man
1998 Zoë Wanamaker for Electra
1997 Janet McTeer for A Doll’s House
1996 Judi Dench for Absolute Hell
1995 Clare Higgins for Sweet Bird Of Youth
1994 Fiona Shaw for Machinal
1993 Alison Steadman for The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice
1992 Juliet Stevenson for Death And The Maiden
1991 Kathryn Hunter for The Visit
1989/90 Fiona Shaw for Electra, As You Like It and The Good Person Of Sichuan
1987 Judi Dench for Antony and Cleopatra
1986 Lindsay Duncan for Les Liaisons Dangereuses
1985 Yvonne Bryceland for The Road To Mecca

Actress of the Year in a New Play

1988 Pauline Collins for Shirley Valentine
1984 Thuli Dumakude for Poppie Nongena
1983 Judi Dench for Pack Of Lies
1982 Rosemary Leach for 84 Charing Cross Road
1981 Elizabeth Quinn for Children Of A Lesser God
1980 Frances de la Tour for Duet For One
1979 Jane Lapotaire for Piaf
1978 Joan Plowright for Filumena
1977 Alison Fiske for Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi
1976 Peggy Ashcroft for Old World

Actress of the Year in a Revival

1988 Harriet Walter for Twelfth Night and The Three Sisters
1984 Vanessa Redgrave for The Aspern Papers
1983 Frances de la Tour for A Moon For The Misbegotten
1982 Cheryl Campbell for A Doll’s House
1981 Margaret Tyzack for Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
1980 Judi Dench for Juno And The Paycock
1979 Zoë Wanamaker for Once In A Lifetime
1978 Dorothy Tutin for The Double Dealer
1977 Judi Dench for Macbeth
1976 Dorothy Tutin for A Month In The Country

Best Actress in a Musical

2011 Sheridan Smith for Legally Blonde – The Musical
2010 Samantha Spiro for Hello Dolly!
2009 Elena Roger for Piaf
2008 Leanne Jones for Hairspray
2007 Jenna Russell for Sunday In The Park With George
2006 Jane Krakowski for Guys And Dolls
2005 Laura Michelle Kelly for Mary Poppins
2004 Maria Friedman for Ragtime at the Piccadilly
2003 Joanna Riding for My Fair Lady
2002 Martine McCutcheon for My Fair Lady
2001 Samantha Spiro for Merrily We Roll Along
2000 Barbara Dickson for Spend Spend Spend
1999 Sophie Thompson for Into The Woods
1998 Ute Lemper for Chicago
1997 Maria Friedman for Passion
1996 Judi Dench for A Little Night Music
1995 Ruthie Henshall for She Loves Me
1994 Julia McKenzie for Sweeney Todd
1993 Joanna Riding for Carousel
1992 Wilhelmenia Fernandez for Carmen Jones
1991 Imelda Staunton for Into The Woods
1989/90 Lea Salonga for Miss Saigon
1988 Patricia Routledge for Candide
1987 Nichola McAuliffe for Kiss Me Kate
1986 Lesley Mackie for Judy
1985 Patti LuPone for Les Misérables and The Cradle Will Rock
1984 Natalia Makarova for On Your Toes
1983 Barbara Dickson for Blood Brothers
1982 Julia McKenzie for Guys And Dolls
1981 Carlin Glynn for The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas
1980 Gemma Craven for They’re Playing Our Song
1979 Virginia McKenna for The King And I

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

The Habit of Art – National Theatre – Review

Few first nights this year have been more eagerly awaited or filled with such expectation as Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art. Bennett’s The History Boys, a palpable hit for the National Theatre, was a hard act to follow, and at the age of 75, one wondered how much dramatic gas Bennett had in the tank, and whether he was still capable of delivering the goods.

The answer is a massive affirmative. Bennett’s creative powers are as acute as they’ve always been, his wit just as sharp and his capacity to move an audience never stronger. With the possible exception of Tom Stoppard, he is the only contemporary dramatist whose work improves with age.

In The Habit of Art, which offers a Pirandellian-like play-within-a-play, the poet W.H. Auden (Richard Griffiths) and the composer Benjamin Britten (Alex Jennings), are fictitiously brought together in 1972, a year before Auden’s death.

Though the pair had collaborated on several projects in the 1930′s, the brittle Britten had taken offence at remarks Auden had made about the composer’s relationship with the singer Peter Pears, and acrimoniously ended their friendship – as he had done and would continue to do with many of his other friends and colleagues.

The play-within-the play, called Caliban’s Day, is being rehearsed in one of the National Theatre’s rehearsal rooms. The director is elsewhere engaged that day, and Kay (Frances de la Tour), the stage manager, has ordered a run through. So, initially, what we’re being presented with is a play about putting on a play. We see how fearful actors are with untried material, how they interrupt rehearsals to question lines and characterisations, often randomly cutting the text much to the chagrin of the long-suffering playwright.

The setting of Caliban’s Day is Auden’s rather squalid digs (courtesy of designer Bob Crowly) at Christ Church, Oxford, where, after he had become an American citizen in 1946, he returned as a verbose old bore, still scribbling away and as useful to the faculty as a sixth finger.

When we first meet him he has just confused the broadcaster Humphrey Carpenter who has come to interview him for Radio Oxford, for a rent boy he’s been hoping to fellate. His next visitor is the rent boy himself, followed by Benjamin Britten, who’s clutching the score of a work in progress, his new opera Death in Venice.

Though it has been over 20 years since the two men met, Britten is concerned that the opera’s subject – the obsession of an older man for a beautiful young boy – is too close to his own fondness for boys (though he never ever molested them), and that it might cause tongues to wag. He also has concerns over the quality of the libretto by his friend Myfanwy Piper.

Auden, who at this late stage in his life longs to be involved in a meaningful project, hopes Britten will ask him to take over the composition of the libretto. But all Briiten wants is advice.

Also present throughout the playwithin- the play, is Carpenter, who went on to write definitive biographies of both men, and who here serves as a kind of chorus probing and commenting on the action. If this structure sounds complicated, it isn’t at all, and the play – which is both about the collaborative creative process in the theatre and the more personal process of writing poetry and music – artfully and fascinatingly moves from the one to the other.

The toll taken by old age on the creative process is another vital element, as is the nature of biography, and what purpose, if any, it serves. The point is made that no matter how accomplished a biography might be, it is still secondary to the subject being written about.

Though most of the time Bennett brilliantly juggles all these elements, there is the occasional misfire. It is hard to believe, for example, that the writer (played with an agonised weariness by Elliot Levey) capable of writing the superb scenes between Auden and Britten, would also write risibly parodic dialogue in rhyming couplets for inanimate objects such as Auden’s door, his chair, his clock and even his craggy wrinkles. They belong in a different play and serve as little more than a device to garner a few unnecessary laughs.

Another device that struck me as mere contrivance was having Auden ask Britten (clearly for the benefit of the less well-informed members of the audience) to remind him what happens in Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice, when it is perfectly obvious he knows every detail of the plot intimately. Nor was I convinced by the arbitrary moments of forgetfulness and repetition with which Auden is suddenly inflicted in his scenes with Britten, as there was little, if any evidence of this condition before.

Mere quibbles, though, far outweighed by the general excellence of the writing, by Nicholas Hytner’s seamless, unobtrusive direction, and by the fine performances.

Richard Griffiths, though nowhere resembling W.H. Auden, is wonderfully irascible and deeply moving as the spent poet who, even in old age cannot quit the habit of art, Alex Jennings as the prissy, more punctilious, envious and unsure of himself Britten (how tellingly he spits out the name of his rival Tippett) is excellent, as is Adrian Scarborough as Humphrey Carpenter. All three play dual roles, the insecure actors rehearsing Caliban’s Day, and the characters they portray in it.

There’s a lovely performance too, from Frances de la Tour as Kay, the efficient, conciliatory seen-it-all-before stage manager, and from Stephen Wight playing the rent boy Stuart.

Towards the end of the play Bennett gives Stuart a speech which makes the point that, in writing about the lives of the great and the good, bit players like Stuart, who are usually little more than a footnote to their lives, deserve recognition too.

Bennett, however, ends this richly textured, multi-faceted, hugely entertaining play with a speech by Kay on the fear that actors feel in their jobs (during rehearsals of Caliban’s Day the author remarks ‘Plays don’t so much go into production, as into intensive care’), of the importance of plays in general and the National Theatre in particular.

Amen to that.

CLIVE HIRSCHHORN. Courtesy of This Is London.

Book tickets to see The Habit of Art at the National Theatre in London