Black Watch and Jersey Boys have been crowned Best New Play and Best New Musical at the 2009 Laurence Olivier Awards. Black Watch director John Tiffany won the Best Director award, while Sir Alan Ayckbourn received the Society’s Special Award.
Originally staged at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival, Black Watch, the tale of a group of soldiers from the eponymous Scottish regiment and their tour of duty in Iraq, finally transferred to London and the Barbican theatre last year. Written by Gregory Burke and based on interviews with former soldiers, the production, staged by the National Theatre of Scotland and directed by Tiffany, used drama, music, movement and song to tell a visceral and shocking story.
Black Watch’s triumph came at the expense of the Tony Award-winning August: Osage County, The Pitmen Painters and That Face. Tiffany’s fellow directorial nominees comprised Terry Johnson (La Cage Aux Folles), Des McAnuff (Jersey Boys) and Emma Rice (Brief Encounter).
Speaking to Official London Theatre after collecting his award, playwright Gregory Burke said: “It’s the second time I’ve been nominated and I just feel fantastic. And so happy for John [Tiffany] and Steven [Hoggett] and everybody. It’s like three years down the road and we’re still winning awards. This is actually now going to be the 23rd award that we’ve had. You think it’s going to run for three weeks in Edinburgh and hopefully it will go to London and all this. It’s just been… you can’t describe it.”
“It’s a good tactic I think – bring the show two years later and you just keep winning awards!” added Best Director recipient Tiffany. “I think it’s a story the audience wanted to hear, and we told that story with as little a political slant as we dare put on it really, so it wasn’t our political thoughts about the whole nature of Iraq and indeed modern warfare, but it was those boys’ stories and actually I think that’s what people really respond to all over the world… so that’s been a real honour.”
Though McAnuff missed out on his solo prize this time – he previously won in 1997 for The Who’s Tommy – Jersey Boys did collect the statuette for Best New Musical, winning against Zorro.
The biographical tale of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, which was already a Broadway hit when it came to the West End, opened at the Prince Edward theatre in March 2008 with Valli among the invited press night guests. Among the songs included in the show are Sherry, Walk Like A Man, December 1963 (Oh, What A Night) and Big Girls Don’t Cry.
Composer and original Four Seasons member Bob Gaudio was on hand to collect the award with book writer Marshall Brickman, and said he was most concerned about how he was going to get the weighty statuette through customs. “This is a thrill of a lifetime, to be on the West End stage with someone playing my life, 47 years later, to get an Olivier…” he added. “It’s very strange. I’m not used to this, it’s just been a wonderful, wonderful evening for us, and a great run here.” The pair will be off to Australia shortly for the opening of the Australian production of Jersey Boys, in July.
Anita Dobson, who presented the Best New Musical award with husband Brian May, said: “We were there at the first night. I love, it I love it, I love it. I’m afraid I jumped up and down [when the award was announced], I was so excited.”
The last award of the evening went to Ayckbourn, who was honoured with the Society’s Special Award following 18 months in which his plays returned to the London stage to near universal acclaim. The gathered guests gave the prolific playwright a standing ovation as he took to the stage to collect his award from Kevin Spacey and Liza Goddard.
Productions of Absurd Person Singular, The Norman Conquests and Woman In Mind have made Ayckbourn’s work ever-present in London recently, but his effect on British theatre stretches much further. His first play, The Square Cat, premiered in Scarborough in 1959, but it was not until 1965 and the first production of Relatively Speaking that his reputation began to grow.
In four decades as an author, Ayckbourn’s 72 plays have included Bedroom Farce, Old Times, A Chorus Of Disapproval and Comic Potential. Knighted in 1997, Ayckbourn’s Special Award comes as he steps down as Artistic Director of Scarborough’s Stephen Joseph theatre after 26 years.
MA
