OLIVIER AWARDS – Best Set and Design Winners

OLIVIER AWARDS – Best Set and Design Winners

Best Set Design

2011 The White Guard designed by Bunny Christie
2010 Jerusalem designed by Ultz
2009 August: Osage County designed by Todd Rosenthal
2008 Rae Smith and the Handspring Puppet Company for War Horse
2007 Sunday In The Park With George, designed by David Farley and Timothy Bird
2006 Hedda Gabler designed by Rob Howell
2005 His Dark Materials designed by Giles Cadle
2004 Hitchcock Blonde designed by William Dudley
2003 A Streetcar Named Desire designed by Bunny Christie

Best Set Designer

2002 Tim Hatley for Humble Boy and Private Lives
2001 William Dudley for All My Sons
2000 Rob Howell for Richard III, Troilus and Cressida and Vassa
1999 Anthony Ward for Oklahoma!
1998 Tim Goodchild for Three Hours After Marriage
1997 Tim Hatley for Stanley
1996 John Napier for Burning Blue
1995 Stephen Brimson Lewis for Design for Living and Les Parents Terribles
1994 Mark Thompson for Hysteria
1993 Ian MacNeil for An Inspector Calls
1992 Mark Thompson for The Comedy Of Errors
1991 Mark Thompson for The Wind In The Willows

Designer of the Year

1989/90Bob Crowley for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Hedda Gabler, Ghetto and The Plantagenets
1988 Richard Hudson for his season at The Old Vic
1987 Lucio Fanti (with Design Team) for The Hairy Ape
1986 William Dudley for Futurists, Kafka’s Dick and The Merry Wives Of Windsor
1985 William Dudley for The Mysteries and The Critics
1984 John Gunter for Wild Honey
1983 Ralph Koltai for Cyrano De Bergerac
1982 John Gunter for Guys And Dolls
1981 Carl Toms for The Provok’d Wife
1980 John Napier and Dermot Hayes for Nicholas Nickleby
1979 William Dudley for Undiscovered Country
1978 Ralph Koltai for Brand
1977 John Napier for King Lear
1976 Farrah for Henry IV (Parts 1 and 2) and Henry V

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.

Save up to Half Price on London theatre

Books PLAYS in the West End