Tonys’ vote of confidence in British theatre
WHEN Hamilton swept the boards at this year’s Oliviers, some theatre-lovers were left wondering at the domination of American productions on London’s most prestigious awards.
Yesterday, home-grown talent got its own back in some style, as British plays, actors and crew enjoyed extraordinary success at the Tonys.
Nominations for the Broadwaybased Tony theatre awards include a raft of British favourites, from the juggernaut of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to Lucy Kirkwood’s nuclear disaster drama The Children.
Four out of the five men nominated for best actor are British, with three of the five best plays originating in the UK. Nominees include Glenda Jackson, Dame Diana Rigg, Sir Mark Rylance, Andrew Garfield and Tom Hollander, along with a lifetime achievement award for Lord Lloyd Webber.
The stars of Harry Potter, Noma Dumezweni, Jamie Parker and Anthony Boyle, are nominated among a total of 10 for the two-part play, reported to be the most expensive ever staged on Broadway.
In April, Telegraph critic Dominic Cavendish remarked that the overall impression of the Olivier Awards, which honoured Hamilton in particular, “attests to a just-detectable lack of confidence in our own product”.
“The minor irony of this year’s wins is that it looks as if we have wound up deferring, to an oleaginous fault, to American culture,” he added.
At the Tonys, the transfer of the National Theatre’s revival of Angels America has 11 nominations, Farinelli and the King has five, including one for Rylance, its lead actor, and a revival of Tom Stoppard’s 1974 farce Travesties has four.
The Children, described as “Fukushima meets The Archers” by the Telegraph’s critic, is up for two awards.
Robert Icke’s adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984, which was controversially deemed ineligible for last year’s Tonys after a journalist on the award committee was refused a ticket, has one nomination, for its sound design.
“New York audiences respond to British stories and Britishness,” Sonia Friedman, the British producer of both Travesties and Harry Potter, told The Daily Telegraph in March. “The successes I’ve had [on Broadway] have all been quintessentially British, with our best playwrights at the centre of them.”