Time for this year's Olivier Awards shortlist, and it's apparent that this year there's been some heavy voting in the postal ballot from the big guns of the West End commercial theatre (who are not obliged to see all the competing productions, and are allowed to vote for their own entries). That's how Spamalot garners so many nominations. The shortlist this year seems more than usually tilted away from the subsidised theatres and the smaller venues, with the exception of the Donmar - a magical space where every sow's ear turns into a silk purse. By bringing the actors so close to the audience, the Donmar makes even mediocre plays seem good, and good ones seem outstanding.
No quarrel with the acting nominations -- Eve Best for A Moon For The Misbegotten heads the list, though some thought she was miscast as the gallumphing heavyweight farmer's daughter. Personally, I thought her performance was all the more remarkable because she didn't look quite right. Sinead Cusack is there for Rock'n'Roll, and Tamsin Greig squeaks in under the December 31 barrier for the RSC's Much Ado About Nothing. My vote would go to the amazing Kathleen Turner for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
This year, unusually, I think there were more great male acting performances than female. Ian Glen is on the list for The RSC's The Crucible, David Haig for Donkey's Years, Rufus Sewell for Rock'n'Roll, and both Michael Sheen and Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon at the Donmar. It's a shame there was no room for Kevin Spacey in Moon for the Misbegotten, nor for Alex Jennings and Simon Russell Beale in The Alchemist at the National Theatre, nor for Roger Allam's performance in Blackbird. Mind you, all three of these gentlemen have won the Best Actor award before.
The lists for Best New Play and Best Revival are hard to argue with. There's only one award for Best Supporting Actor when the sheer profusion of acting talent around means there should really be two, one for men and one for women. And I think it's a pity that unlike some other awards, the Olivier doesn't have a category for Best Newcomer. Poor bloody actors -- they deserve more gongs.
Best New Comedy (always a very thin category) contains just three plays, none of which quite fits the bill: The 39 Steps, Don Juan in Soho and Love Song. I didn't see the last of these, but by all accounts it wasn't up to much. The 39 Steps isn't really a play, more a series of devised sketches based less on Buchan's novel than on Hitchcock's film. It would be ludicrous for it to win a writing award. I also have reservations about Don Juan, which is an adaptation of Moliere by Patrick Marber, not an original play. To my mind the best comedy of the year was Steve Thompson's Whipping It Up at the Bush -- which is getting a West End transfer and should be eligible next time round.
Things get tricky in the awards which are shared between musicals and straight theatre, and it's in these categories that the panellists have clearly been outgunned by Society of London Theatre members. Best set design offers a choice of three musicals, with no straight theatre, while Best Director pitches Dominic Cooke (The Crucible) against the directors of two musicals, Wicked and Sunday In The Park With George. There's no place for Declan Donnellan (The Changeling) or for Marianne Elliott (Therese Raquin and Much Ado About Nothing). The same thing happens in the costume design category, with Wicked and Spamalot squaring up against the National Theatre's Voysey Inheritance. This all seems a bit of a lottery.
What's already apparent is that there seems to have been organised voting for Spamalot. Now I haven't seen the musicals, so I can't comment, but I rather suspect that if this tactic succeeds, we'll see more of it in future years. Why be on the panel at all, either as a professional or a public member, if you're going to be steamrollered by commercial interests in this way? It's clear that the National Theatre won't get much this year, despite some outstanding productions, notably The Alchemist. And if I was running a theatre outside the West End, I would seriously question whether it's worth the cost of membership at all, when the voting system allows the shortlist to be partly determined by people who won't have seen all the plays on offer. In the final analysis, it would be naive to imagine that the Olivier Awards are run like the Nobel Prizes. This is a trade association where business interests loom large, and an award for a long-running musical can earn extra millions at the box office. Most of the straight theatre productions in 2006 have already closed, while the musicals are still competing for audiences. Let's hope that some of the balance will be redressed when the winners are revealed next month. At the final stage, only panel members (who have at least seen all the productions) get the right to vote.
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