Take Me To The World - The Olivier Awards Meet Life
Theatre Proves Its Importance to Changing Minds and Telling Real Stories
British Theatre is an undeniable commercial and creative global success story. There are currently at least 12 UK based shows on Broadway from Jodie Comer in the one woman tour de force Prima Facie to the longest running show in the history of the universe: Phantom of the Opera which has taken over ONE BILLION DOLLARS on Broadway!
This year The Olivier Awards (‘Theatre’s Biggest Night’ ®) at the Royal Albert Hall was full of our amazing industry’s most talented people celebrating themselves and the work they had created. Which is how it should be. But here’s the real story: Despite our country being run by a Government that appears hell bent on reserving access to culture to the 1%, there was a lot of love (and awards) going to stories about what used to be called ‘social issues’ but that we now just call ‘life’.
Standing At The Sky’s Edge was produced in Sheffield and played a limited season at The National Theatre. The show takes us through 60 years of life in Park Hill, a council housing estate in Sheffield and won Best New Musical. With its scope, its searingly emotional score by Richard Hawley and the way that it deals with real life and real working class people this show could become the 21st Century Blood Brothers - or a Yorkshire Les Miserables. It is already being adapted for a 4 part TV series.
Sylvia, a new show at the Old Vic, saw a Best Supporting Actress award for the incredible Beverly Knight (AKA star of the night!). The show tells the story of rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst. Its musical style is rap and R&B performed by a cast that represents and looks like society. Sylvia gave us a powerful, funky and potent performance of March, Women March which also had the courage to question Churchill’s legacy
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There was comment on Egyptian / Israeli relations from The Band’s Visit and Miri Mesika’s performance of Omar Sharif will go down as one of the all time best. Once again this piece deals with how ordinary people navigate the world.
Prima Facie which won Best Play and Best Actress for Jodie Comer is about how badly sexual assault is dealt with in our legal system. It is another challenging and very real story that needs to be told.
The affiliate theatre award rightly went to the beautiful, heart wrenching and powerful, The P Word, produced at the Bush Theatre in West London. This is a play about immigrant identity, love, homophobia, racism and how violently cruel the UK immigration system has become. It is realness times several million!
A couple of weeks ago Sir David Hare spouted on in the Tory house magazine, The Spectator, about there being too many musicals in London. Then dear old Micheal Billington cried into his Harveys Bristol Cream about walking the length of Shaftesbury Avenue and not seeing a single Kafka, Dario Fo or Aristophanes play. Maybe its time for both of them to head out for a night in the theatre and maybe the real world.
The Olivier Awards showcased theatre about serious subjects. There were no men waking up as insects or casts full of other men in tights and doubloons because there has been a change. Even that most trad of musicals, Oklahoma, has been revitalised by Daniel Fish so that it now gives us sex, violence and racism on the prairies.
The night’s biggest winner, My Neighbour Totoro, is based on the animated classic from Studio Ghibli and talks about animism, illness and escaping into a fantasy world. All of which resonates with a post-covid audience
This must be confusing for the traditional traditionalists. I mean how dare theatre tell stories that reflect life today?
But has something changed? It is clear that there is a ‘new traditional’ and this year it feels like we are finally seeing what this is. The world right now is very real. In the UK young people have had their youth stolen by the pandemic, the cost of living crisis and an increasingly right wing ruling class. This creates a conflict between what they get told about life and their lived experience. And now stories of real life are being told in theatres. And not just small, publicly funded local theatre but right there in the West End, on the Oliviers sponsored by Mastercard.
A couple of weeks ago the BBC showed A Big Night Out at The Musicals which gave us numbers from hit shows and was paid for by the National Lottery. It was striking to see the generation gap between The King and I and Queens of SIX. While the King of Siam is fascinated by a waltz the Queens of Six fascinate us with their determination not be identified by their common husbands. Two very different worlds, two different generations.
This year there was a generational change at the Olivier Awards. We still loved the Sisters in Sister Act but we preferred the Sisterhood in Sylvia. Grease is now a kitsch piece of teenage escapism whereas The Band’s Visit explores what Egyptians and Israelis have in common. I’ve never met a man who Metamorphised into an insect but we all know women who have been assaulted - and that story feels more urgent, more important, more compelling this year than ever.
In 2018 Hamilton kicked down a load of doors in theatre and won pretty much every award going. However, it was Lead actor Giles Terera who put it best. On accepting his Olivier Award for Best Actor he told the Royal Albert Hall “Diversity is not an issue. Diversity is life”
Finally the message is landing.
