Mark Ravenhill up for Writers’ Guild award alongside James Graham and Poppy Burton-Morgan

Mark Ravenhill’s The Cane and musical In the Willows by Poppy Burton-Morgan have been nominated for the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Awards 2020.

Ravenhill’s The Cane, which ran at the Royal Court, is nominated for best play, opposite Ali and Dahlia by Tariq Jordan at London’s Pleasance Theatre and Wolfie by Ross Willis at Theatre503.

The Cane review at Royal Court, London – ‘Mark Ravenhill’s tense and slippery new play’

Burton-Morgan’s In the Willows – the Hip Hop Musical is nominated for best musical theatre book writing, opposite Growl – The True Story of the Big Bad Wolf by Timothy Knapman, and Unfortunate: The Untold Story of Ursula the Sea Witch, by Robyn Grant and Daniel Foxx.

Elsewhere, the best play for young people features nominations for Like Water for Goldfish by Mike Kenny, Small Wonders by Nessah Muthy and The Canary and the Crow by Daniel Ward.

James Graham’s Channel 4 drama Brexit – The Uncivil War is up in the best short-form TV drama category.

WGGB president Sandi Toksvig said: “In such tumultuous times, when truth becomes ever stranger than fiction, we rely on writers to reflect, to inform, to distract, to entertain and to make meaning of it all. And what a lot of talent in this year’s Writers’ Guild Awards shortlist – from page, stage, screen and across the airwaves.”

The awards will take place on January 13 at the Royal College of Physicians in central London.

Small Wonders review at Bernie Grant Arts Centre, London – ‘imaginatively rich new work from Punchdrunk’