It looked at first like a flashback to last year’s Olivier awards for director Rebecca Frecknall at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Sunday night. Her revival of Cabaret won seven awards in 2022 and her new production, A Streetcar Named Desire, took home some of the biggest accolades this time: best revival, best actor for Paul Mescal (perhaps an inevitability given his ascendancy and Oscar nomination) and best supporting actress for Anjana Vasan.
But it became instead an overwhelming victory for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s adaptation of the Japanese animated film My Neighbour Totoro. The show, directed by Phelim McDermott, is a spellbinding combination of Studio Ghibli-inspired aesthetics and Shinto-inspired philosophy alongside gorgeous light, sound and Basil Twist’s puppetry direction. It boasts a thoroughly diverse cast, too, and is an exemplar of the way animation can be reformulated for the stage. It was particularly satisfying to see the brilliant young lighting designer Jessica Hung Han Yun recognised for her talent alongside sound designer Tony Gayle.
Jodie Comer rightly won best actress award for her towering performance in Suzie Miller’s monologue Prima Facie, about sexual assault and the legal system, all the more staggering given it was Comer’s West End debut. Her performance arguably pasted over the weaknesses of the play itself, which took home the best new play award. While its incendiary subject matter is urgent and important, it felt like a loss that Ryan Calais Cameron’s For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy went home empty-handed, especially given its journey from fringe theatre to the West End.
What was striking among the biggest winners was that several have already secured continuing commercial life. Prima Facie is on its way to Broadway and Streetcar is now in the West End. Peter Morgan’s Patriots, which won an award for Will Keen, is also transferring to the West End while Totoro is coming back to the Barbican.
What was also remarkable is the number of wins for the Almeida: as well as the success for Patriots and Streetcar, James Graham’s ebullient Tammy Faye scooped two awards. Has artistic director Rupert Goold found the sweet spot between artistic integrity and canny commercialism? All these winning productions came with celebrity tinsel, from Mescal in Streetcar to Tom Hollander in Patriots and the heady musical mix of Elton John and Jake Shears on Tammy Faye.
If the Oliviers are a gauge for the state of the theatre industry as a whole, its list of winners points to an unequivocal post-pandemic truth: theatre is increasingly co-opting screen stars for the stage. We might argue that Totoro is, in itself, a screen star, but at least the show is not led by one big name and for that alone it is a refreshing winner.
This begs important questions: is a big name what producers feel will now sell a show? Where does it leave emerging stage talent? We have seen how much some will pay to see Eddie Redmayne, Jonathan Bailey and, latterly, James Norton on stage. How will ticket prices rebound on the industry’s push towards greater access and more diverse audiences, as Derek Jacobi pointed out?
It was wonderful to see Oklahoma! recognised and a reminder that theatre-makers have permission to make old stories as audaciously new as Daniel Fish has done. It was also marvellous to see Chris Bush and Richard Hawley’s musical about a Sheffield housing estate, Standing at the Sky’s Edge (also now coming to the West End), recognised.
Heroic losers included Patsy Ferran, the last-minute lead in Streetcar, and Marisha Wallace, arguably the most talented musical star right now. Beverley Knight name-checked her as she collected the award for best supporting actress in a musical, for which Wallace was shortlisted. But there can only be one winner and Wallace will, without doubt, get her moment in the Olivers’ sun one day.
