It was a head-to-head between the two big musicals of last year, but Peter Darling has won the Best Theatre Choreographer Award for Billy Elliot over Guys And Dolls’ choreographer Rob Ashford.
Billy Elliot – The Musical opened at the Victoria Palace theatre last May and tells the story of a boy from a northern mining community who auditions for the Royal Ballet School. Much of the narrative is expressed through dance, and Peter Darling’s award-winning choreography has created memorable scenes such as young ballerinas dancing alongside policemen and miners on the picket line.
Darling has recently picked up a number of other awards for his work on Billy Elliot, including Best Choreography (Musical Theatre) in the Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards and Best Choreographer in the Theatregoers’ Choice Awards.
The man himself was not there to collect his Laurence Olivier award, so Leon Cooke, one of the young actors currently sharing the role of Billy Elliot, mounted the stage with Director Stephen Daldry in tow to receive it on his behalf. Chatting to officiallondontheatre.co.uk afterwards, Leon was only too pleased to extoll the virtues of his favourite choreographer: "We love Peter Darling. He’s wicked. He’s always thinking of new ideas and he’s great to work with, he’s amazing."
Peter "wicked" Darling has worked on many Laurence Olivier Award-winning productions. His previous London stage credits include Our House at the Cambridge, Merrily We Roll Along at the Donmar and Candide at the National. Darling is also on the team behind The Lord Of The Rings stage adaptation which had its world premiere in Toronto last week and should transfer to the West End next year.
The award was presented by former Oliviers host Angela Rippon, who afterwards seized upon the chance to tell us how important she feels the Laurence Olivier Awards are: "I presented the Oliviers for three years so I know how important they are to the people who win them and the nice thing about them is that they don’t just give awards to the big stars, often they are people that members of the public wouldn’t know if they met them on the street, but they are essential to the backbone and survival of British theatre and they certainly deserve to win these awards." Well said, Angela.
Billy Elliot is directed by Stephen Daldry, with music by Elton John and lyrics by Lee Hall. The show had an incredible nine nominations at this year’s Laurence Olivier Awards.
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