Layton Williams doesn’t mind that his strangest role in Titanique is the one that finally got his talent honoured — he’s been defying the snobs since childhood
Winning an Olivier award is a defining moment in any actor’s stage career: Ian McKellen for Richard III, Judi Dench for Lady Macbeth, Layton Williams for, er, the iceberg…
Last week the 30-year-old from Bury won best supporting actor in a musical for his role in Titanique, a madcap spoof of James Cameron’s 1997 film Titanic. The show, which also won best new entertainment or comedy play, depicts Céline Dion, who sang the film’s theme song, romping around the stage, putting herself front and centre of the story. Bizarrely, yet somehow fittingly, Williams’s iceberg is reimagined as a Tina Turner drag act, with a silver sequin dress, heels and an ice-blue wig.
“Oh my God, I just won an Olivier for being an iceberg,’” Williams says when we meet in his dressing room at the Criterion Theatre in London, surrounded by make-up and a glittering costume rail. “My 80-year-old Jamaican nanna sat in the third row last night … She was looking up at me thinking, ‘How did we get here?’”…
Criterion Theatre, London
