My Oliviers groundhog day

I experienced the Olivier Awards on Sunday twice over, for a dose of groundhog day – once live in person, then again when I got home on live television.

I began my Oliviers day with a press reception at One Aldwych, a nearby hotel where SOLT President Mark Rubinstein was hosting a few assorted members of the Critics Circle (including Henry Hitchings, Sarah Hemming, Andrzej Lukowski and Terri Paddock) and Tim Walker (who hasn’t joined the circle).

We then decamped (in every sense) to the Royal Opera House, where a massive red carpet took up the width and length of Bow Street from the corner of what used to be the Theatre Museum upwards (and is now a theatrical restaurant instead, the London branch of New York’s Balthazar) and had us this year at least not squelching through rain to get to the Opera House. There was also plenty of room to avoid the cameras and assorted celebrities, though I found myself being briefly interviewed by Josh Rochford, roving reporter for Fourthwall magazine.

After a quick pre-drinks reception in the Floral Hall, I then took my seat in the front stalls of the glorious Royal Opera House – on the side of the 5th row (Row C). I think that was the identical location I was in last year, when I was wedged in between Nancy Carroll on my left and Reece Shearsmith on my right (who told me that it was the first time he’d ever been inside the Opera House, which had me both incredulous but also intrigued by how far the Opera House had to go in its accessibility programme if major popular culture actors like Shearsmith had hitherto found no reason to go there).

This time, however, I was seated beside Jonathan Kent, who has not only been to the opera house, but directed here, too – he directed Tosca there in 2006, in a production that will be back there in July, while in June he will return with a new production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut. But on Sunday, of course, he was there representing his operatic staging of the musical Sweeney Todd – and collecting the award for Best Musical Revival.

In fact, I was (appropriately for me!) right in the throng of Sweeney Todd nominees, including Michael Ball sitting three seats along from me with longtime partner Cathy McGowan and Imelda Staunton, in front of me with husband Jim Carter and (a now very tall) daughter Bessie. Many years ago, I had been in New York at the same time as Imelda, Jim and Bessie and we had all gone together to see the Broadway production of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, and here we were again, in the same theatre at the same time – with Imelda giving one of the speeches of the night, paying tribute to her husband’s support (for coming to the first preview and first night of Sweeney Todd, but by the time the last night came around, saying, “I’ve seen it already!”), and dedicating the award to her daughter’s future.

I also had Janie Dee (accompanied by her husband Rupert Wickham) whooping and cheering more than just about anyone in the theatre immediately behind me, even when she didn’t get the award for Best Supporting Actress in a Play (that was taken by Nicola Walker for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which she only did at the National and not in its current West End transfer; I wonder if the voters realised this). And across the aisle, the angelic, freshly scrubbed looking Daniel Radcliffe was just behind Helen Mirren, while two rows in front of me on my side of the aisle were Rupert Everett (accompanied by Judas Kiss producer Robert Fox) and Kim Cattrall, with Adrian Lester on the aisle a row behind.

And yes, that’s a big part of any awards ceremony: the gathering together of celebrities and the chance for the public to see them on the red carpet or on the TV package being broadcast later that evening for the first time in ten years. So it’s a fun part of my job to come into close quarters with it, though I quickly bowed out of the post-awards party scrum in the Opera House’s beautiful Floral Hall where you could barely move.

So it meant that I got home in time for round two of the my Oliviers night live for the packaged, digested version on television. And it was striking first of all how different it was – there was comparatively little emphasis on the award presentations themselves and acceptance speeches, which were mostly reduced to brief highlights, whereas they comprised the bulk of the evening in the Opera House itself, where proceedings ran for 3 hours 15 minutes against 90 including commercial breaks on TV.

Instead, there was a much greater concentration on the musical content of the show on the night, which made it seem like a re-run of a Royal Variety show at times, especially with the addition of imported guests Idina Menzel and Matthew Morrison (both from Broadway and Glee) and our own now octogenarian Petula Clark, who performed material unrelated to current West End shows.

It meant that even an Olivier-nominated production like Loserville, whose composer James Bourne sang a song from the show, got shunted off the telecast (and even out of the Opera House, too, to be performed instead on the live stage in the outdoor piazza). So did Olivier winner Michael Ball’s rendition of Love Changes Everything, joined by a choir from ArtsEd. Surely Ball has more local fans than, say, Morrison or Menzel, and our own stars of the future from ArtsEd deserved their moment more in the television spotlight.

If we are to accept that the awards represent a chance to offer a gleaming shop window on the West End, why is it being offered up as a limp retrospective with irrelevant star appearances instead of local talent and the shows that are actually playing at the moment? Given how poor some of the musicals of the last year have been (with two of the four nominated for Best New Musical already shut, and the winner based on a 1935 film which hardly qualifies as new), perhaps a true celebration of what’s on in the West End could have included numbers from The Book of Mormon and Once, which both opened after the current eligibility period, or even scenes from shows yet to open like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

As it is, even with the songs they did field from current and recent productions, things weren’t necessarily thought through. We had Will Young and the cast of the recent production of Cabaret singing ‘Wilkommen’ – a natural opener if ever there was one, but it went second, after co-host Sheridan Smith sang ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’ from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Why?

Then again, they had one of the greatest finales to a musical ever in ‘One’ from A Chorus Line – but instead of finishing with it, it closed the first act instead. And to compound the ironies, they then closed the evening with ‘Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats’ – the opening number of Cats!

I’ve not paused here to discuss the results themselves – I’ve done that in a separate feature which will also be in this week’s print edition, along with an interview with Gillian Lynne and more Olivier Awards coverage.