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

Breakfast at Tiffany's – Review

Review of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S at the Theatre Royal Haymarket

Like Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, though only more so, Truman Capote’s most endearing creation, Holly Golightly, the heroine of his 1958 novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s, exists most vividly in the mind’s eye. Endow her with flesh and blood and the bloom soon evaporates.

In Blake Edwards’s 1961 screen version, even the captivating Audrey Hepburn, who came as close as was humanly possible to recreating the essence of Holly, was unable to satisfy everyone’s expectations.

An adult, yet with a childlike irresponsibility, Holly is naive as well as sophisticated. Her heart is definitely in the right place and she wouldn’t harm a fly, but at the same time she is oblivious of the hurt and destruction her selfishness can bring to others. She never thinks about the consequences of her actions, yet she is abundantly capable of warmth and tenderness. She can both infuriate and enchant, annoy and delight. She is contradictory and contrary, yet totally, absolutely lovable. Has there ever been a more elusive yet enchanting creature?

To ask an actress to capture all of Holly’s maddening yet delightful qualities – as well as her beauty – is something of a tall order. Offered a chance to take it on, Anna Friel, in what should have been a career-making opportunity, certainly provides the looks.

But alas, not much else. She does her best and towards the very end even manages a smidgen of vulnerability.

Ultimately, though, the task is beyond her and, consequently, there’s a cavernous gap at the centre of Samuel Adamson’s adaptation of Capote’s novella.

Nor is the situation helped by Anthony Ward’s set (two revolving fireescapes on either side of the stage plus some nasty cut-outs of the Manhattan skyline) which is of such singular ugliness it does nothing to conjure the exotic glamour and excitement of New York in the early forties and late fifties.

As William Parsons, the sexually ambivalent would-be author and narrator who lives in the same brownstone apartment as Holly (and who is unrequitedly in thrall of her), American actor Joseph Cross – looking like a young Tim Robbins – doesn’t make much of an impression either. But then none of the cast, with the exceptions of Dermot Crowley’s barman Joe Bell and John Ramm as Holly’s forgotten husband Doc, convinces. Strange this, considering that one whole page of the programme is devoted to the four (count ‘em) casting directors used on the production. Go figure, as they say.

Though pretty faithful to the novella, playwright Adamson does take certain liberties with some of the supporting players, most noticeably Madame Spanella (Suzanne Bertish), a wannabee opera singer. In the book she’s the moral guardian of the piece, anxious to have Holly, the immoral party-girl, evicted. Yet as tweaked by Adamson, she thinks nothing of seducing young men by inviting them to her apartment for ‘filet mignon’ and to ‘listen to my cadenza’. Which turns her into something of a hypocrite. And a comic caricature.

Director Sean Mathias is in better control of the play’s more intimate moments than the clunky crowd-scenes, but he should have eliminated the silly horse-riding and kite-flying sequences.

Though this adaptation is closer to Capote’s original text than the film, watching it is like breakfasting at a greasy spoon rather than anything associated with Tiffany’s.

Another pointless attempt to improve on a classic.

CLIVE HIRSCHHORN. Courtesy of This Is London.

Book tickets to Breakfast at Tiffany’s at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in London