‘Hamilton’ takes 7 prizes at UK stage Olivier Awards

LONDON » Historical hip-hop musical “Hamilton” took seven trophies including best new musical at British theater’s Olivier Awards, where women’s rights activists joined stage stars on the red carpet to support the Time’s Up movement.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical about U.S. founding father Alexander Hamilton was nominated in a record 13 categories at Britain’s equivalent of the Tony Awards. The show, which turns an early chapter of U.S. history into a compellingly modern story, opened in London in December after taking New York by storm.

Jamael Westman gained a bestactor nomination in the title role, but lost out to co-star Giles Terera, who plays Hamilton’s nemesis, Aaron Burr. Terera said it had been “the joy of my life” to perform with the most diverse company he’d ever been part of.

“Diversity is not a policy. It is life,” he said.

Backstage, the British actor said he knew the first time he saw “Hamilton” that the show was “the most extraordinary thing I’d ever heard and seen.”

“Every now and again, you have a show which comes along and sort of shifts things and moves outside of the realm of musical theater,” he said, likening the impact of “Hamilton” to earlier revolutionary musicals such as “West Side Story,” “Les Miserables” or “Rent.”

Michael Jibson took the supporting-actor trophy for playing colonies-losing British monarch King George III in “Hamilton.”

The show — with a score that ranges from pop ballads and sexy R&B to rap battles — also won Oliviers for outstanding achievement in music, sound, lighting and choreography.

The seven wins didn’t beat the awards’ record haul of nine trophies, set last year by “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”

Jez Butterworth’s drama “The Ferryman,” about the past coming back to haunt a Northern Ireland family, won three prizes including best play, best director for Sam Mendes and best actress for Laura Donnelly.

Bryan Cranston was named best actor in a play for his National Theatre performance as a news anchorman who snaps in “Network.” The former “Breaking Bad” star beat rivals who included Andrew Garfield, for playing a man with AIDS in the British revival of “Angels in America” and Andrew Scott for the title role of “Hamlet.”

“It’s very difficult to be mad as hell when you’re holding an Olivier,” Cranston said, a nod to his character Howard Beale’s famous cry: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”