A stage adaptation of Life of Pi and a revival of the musical Cabaret were the big winners at Sunday’s Olivier Awards. It was a jubilant night for theatre at the Royal Albert Hall as the staging industry celebrated a year in which performances resumed after lockdown. Cabaret stars Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley won acting prizes while the show was named best musical revival. Life of Pi, based on the Booker Prize-winning novel, was named the best new play and scooped several technical prizes.
The play’s lead, Hiran Abeysekera, also won the best actor, while the seven actors who play the tiger shared the best supporting actor prize. Cabaret’s success at the first Olivier ceremony since 2020 follows a critically-acclaimed sell-out run for the show which saw London’s Playhouse Theatre transformed into the Kit Kat Club. The production scooped seven of the 11 prizes it was nominated for, including all four of the musical acting prizes for Redmayne, Buckley, Elliot Levey and Liza Sadovy.
Accepting his prize for his performance as the famous Emcee in the show, Redmayne said: “This is the dream. For me, this is the one.” “This was the part that I played when I was a kid in school. It was the thing that got my passion for theatre really fuelled.” Buckley, who played Sally Bowles, said in her acceptance speech: “It’s such a huge privilege to be part of this community which I consider my family. Thank you for welcoming me all those years ago. This is just so lovely.”
Rebecca Frecknall was also named best director, and she dedicated the prize to her late father, who she explained had played Emcee as a student in 1975. Life of Pi, a philosophical novel originally written by Yann Martel, was also adapted into a film in 2012 which starred Suraj Sharma and won four Oscars.
Playwright Lolita Chakrabarti thanked Martel for giving her the “complete freedom to do what I wanted with his story” as she accepted one of the five prizes to be won by the stage adaptation. She also thanked her husband, actor Adrian Lester. “When I started writing, he was my biggest fan and encouraged me completely. When all the doors were shut, he said ‘keep knocking, because they’ll open,” she recalled.
In a touching speech, the show’s star Abeysekera said he was “overwhelmed” to win the best actor. He paid tribute to his home country of Sri Lanka, which he said was going through a “tough time now… I think of you and wish I was there with you”. Sri Lanka has descended into a deep financial crisis, and there have been recent protests calling for the resignation of president Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Back To The Future was named best new musical – one of the night’s most competitive categories.
“Oh my goodness, I was not expecting this,” said producer Colin Ingram as he accepted the prize. “This has been eight years of development. To all the nominees, congratulations, it’s been a hell of a year.” Sheila Atim won the best actress for her performance in a revival of Constellations, a production that saw four different two-person casts alternating throughout its run. “I’m so proud to be part of the theatre community, I’m so proud of all you guys for still being here,” she said. “This play is about facing adversity together, and we all did that.”
There were live performances on the night from the casts of shows including Moulin Rouge, Back To The Future, Drifters Girl, Frozen, Life of Pi, Anything Goes and Get Up Stand Up. The ceremony also paid tribute to those within the industry who have died in the past two years, including actors Christopher Plummer, Dame Barbara Windsor, Paul Ritter, Geoffrey Palmer, Sir Antony Sher, and Una Stubbs, Des O’Connor and composer Stephen Sondheim.
