Call me cynical, but this year’s list of winners looks suspiciously like a marketing exercise for Sunset Boulevard, which just happens to be heading to Broadway this autumn. With Nicole Scherzinger cast as the delusional silent-era star Norma Desmond, Jamie Lloyd’s video-driven revival was always going to make a PR splash, but it was still odd to see the Lloyd Webber juggernaut shoving aside Guys and Dolls, Groundhog Day and Hadestown — all of them far more interesting shows — to win best musical revival.
True, there’s a case for saying Scherzinger had just the right diva image to take on the role of the star clinging to past glories, but I’m bemused that Marisha Wallace was overlooked for best actress in a musical after her sizzling performance as Miss Adelaide in Guys. And Charlie Stemp, a force of nature in the revival of that effervescent Gershwin show Crazy for You, might want to consult his lawyers after being overlooked in favour of Scherzinger’s undeniably talented co-star Tom Francis.
Equally, Rupert Goold may well feel miffed that Lloyd edged him out of the best director slot. After all, in Dear England, James Graham’s football drama at the National which won best new play, Goold helped to create an intelligent state-of-the-nation pageant that turned the beautiful game into a form of ballet with added testosterone.
The National will have been gratified to see Mark Gatiss collect a well-deserved award for his subtle impersonation of John Gielgud in The Motive and the Cue. After a rocky spell, the outgoing artistic director Rufus Norris can look back on a highly successful year, although some of us are still wondering how the NT’s superb adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches managed to miss out on a nomination in the best new musical category. Still, I don’t think many musical theatre fans will be complaining that Operation Mincemeat came out on top in the final shortlist: this remarkable tongue-in-cheek retelling of the Second World War intelligence campaign is the opposite of Sunset — it’s nimble and quick-witted. Amid all the jokes, it still manages to be respectful of the memory of war veterans.
With Stranger Things: The First Shadow winning best new entertainment and best set design, theatreland tipped its hat to a sci-fi TV spin-off that, for all its longueurs, helped to bring a new audience into the stalls. Two solo shows were big winners as well. I’m not convinced that the one-man version of Uncle Vanya, starring Andrew Scott, really deserved its gong: as my colleague Dominic Maxwell pointed out in his review, for all Scott’s abilities, it wasn’t easy to make sense of Chekhov’s storyline. And you can’t help wondering if star power explains why Sarah Snook, better known as Shiv in the TV series Succession, came out on top in the technically audacious but relentlessly camp version of The Picture of Dorian Gray. I would have gone for Laura Donnelly in The Hills of California, an example of a gifted actress lifting an over-long play. Donnelly was simply incandescent.
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The winners
Best new musical
• The Little Big Things
• Next to Normal
• Operation Mincemeat
• A Strange Loop
Winner: Operation Mincemeat
Best new play
• Dear England
• The Hills of California
• The Motive and the Cue
• Till the Stars Come Down
Best actress
• Laura Donnelly (The Hills of California)
• Sophie Okonedo (Medea)
• Sarah Jessica Parker (Plaza Suite)
• Sheridan Smith (Shirley Valentine)
• Sarah Snook (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
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Winner: Sarah Snook
Best actor
• Joseph Fiennes (Dear England)
• Mark Gatiss (The Motive and the Cue)
• James Norton (A Little Life)
• Andrew Scott (Vanya)
• David Tennant (Macbeth)
Winner: Mark Gatiss
Best revival
• The Effect
• Macbeth
• Shirley Valentine
• Vanya
Winner: Vanya
Best musical revival
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• Groundhog Day
• Guys & Dolls
• Hadestown
• Sunset Boulevard
Winner: Sunset Boulevard
Best actor in a musical
• David Cumming (Operation Mincemeat)
• Tom Francis (Sunset Boulevard)
• Daniel Mays (Guys & Dolls)
• Charlie Stemp (Crazy for You)
Winner: Tom Francis
Best actress in a musical
• Natasha Hodgson (Operation Mincemeat)
• Caissie Levy (Next to Normal)
• Nicole Scherzinger (Sunset Boulevard)
• Marisha Wallace (Guys & Dolls)
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Winner: Nicole Scherzinger
Best director
• Stephen Daldry & Justin Martin (Stranger Things: The First Shadow)
• Rupert Goold (Dear England)
• Jamie Lloyd (Sunset Boulevard)
• Sam Mendes (The Motive and the Cue)
Winner: Jamie Lloyd
Best new entertainment or comedy play
• Accidental Death of an Anarchist
• Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends
• Stranger Things: The First Shadow
• Vardy v Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial
Winner: Stranger Things: The First Shadow
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