Evening Standard Awards and Donmar's Law

Excellent news that Lee Hall's The Pitmen Painters has deservedly won Best Play in the Evening Standard Awards announced yesterday.  I'm glad that Chiwetel Ejiofor has got his Best Actor award for Othello, adding to the Olivier he won earlier this year (the calendar for the Olivier runs until December 31 and this was a 2007 production for them).  I'm in two minds about the Best Actress award shared by Penelope Wilton and Margaret Tyzack for The Chalk Garden.  Both performances were excellent of course, but I thought the play was a load of rubbish.  There is of course DONMAR'S LAW (should I trademark this phrase?) which states that any play, however bad, looks hugely improved when performed at the Donmar because the audience is so close.  This wasn't a great year for female acting performances -- not the fault of those richly talented actresses but of a lack of good parts.  I might have picked Katy Stephens for her roles in the RSC Histories cycle, or Jane Horrocks for The Good Soul of Szechuan, or Nicola Hughes as Ella Fitzgerald in Marilyn and Ella.  2008 was a year in which the repertoire's innate bias towards male leads was very evident.