Matt Wolf London theatre is at the top of its game, so who will win our awards?
actor Arinzé Kene’s pulsating, self-analytical Misty and the mighty Sharon D Clarke in a revival of the Tony Kushner/ Jeanine Tesori musical Caroline, or Change. Kene and Clarke are among those competing for Best Musical Performance, a category that was only introduced to these awards in 2013.
The musicals front, coupling new shows with revivals, teems with excitement, not least thanks to Hamilton, a title that absolutely places diversity centre-stage and that has crossed the Atlantic without any diminution of its impact Stateside.
Adrienne Warren and Phyllida Lloyd, as the star and director of Tina, jointly elevated what might have been a bogstandard jukebox musical, while the Young Vic punched above its weight once again with the summer premiere of the Tony-winning musical Fun Home.
As fo r C o mp a ny, n ow ex te n d e d through March at the Gielgud Theatre, the director Marianne Elliott’s miraculous reclamation of the 1970 Tonywinner from Stephen Sondheim and George Furth shifted a male-centric piece from the onetime bachelor, Bobby, to an unmarried female Bobbie (the resplendent Rosalie Craig).
It is a show as moving as it is funny that manages finally to make this vaunted title more than the sum of its component parts (and now classic score). “I’m ready,” an exultant Bobbie exclaims at a climactic moment of Company, and she could be speaking for a theatre culture that has every reason for its own exultation just now. Good luck on Sunday, and good work all round.
⬤ Matt Wolf is London theatre critic of The International New York Times and a member of the advisory judging panel of the Evening Standard Theatre Awards, which take place on Sunday