Olivier Awards 2016

Apr 5, 2016 11:45:50 GMT theatremiss said:

Apr 5, 2016 9:37:53 GMT danieljohnson14 said:

Anyone else pick up on how awful Denise Gough's eye make-up was on the night? It looks like she has two black eyes, it was just awful!

She was sat across the aisle from me and I thought she looked ill. Her dress was backless and you could count her ribs. I wonder though if this may be due to her role. I haven't seen the play but gather her character is a drink/drug addict, so perhaps the gaunt look is what is needed

I can understand that with the body for the role etc... but she could at least do her eye make-up nice haha!

Sometimes subtle is best!

That was a perfect example of how not to televise an awards ceremony. “Say, we’ve got to cut one of these, which do you think will attract more viewers – the famous, sexy, talented and popular star/writer of Sherlock giving an endearing speech, of Cindy Lauper duetting with Michael Ball? I can think of no better way to celebrate the best in British theatre than giving a ten minute plug to an American singer’s new country album.”. Given that plays were given five minutes of airtime I think that deserved the ‘mainstream audience’ of 23:00 on a Sunday night – four filmed scenes for plays, two of which are still on! How hard is that? Ignoring the fact that televising it so long after the fact and so late on a Sunday will make for terrible viewing figures anyway, the show itself was so bland, so poorly constructed and so badly shown anyone up at that time will have watched Sex Box instead.

That said, that was also a perfect example of how not to programme an awards ceremony. Whoever wrote Michael Ball’s script should be taken out back and shot, and bless Ball for knowing how bad it was from five minutes in but still persevering but blimey his intrusions into the songs he sang felt completely first-year-at-drama-school-look-at-me-look-at-me. Whoever wrote the autocue for the presenters, assuming it was someone else, ought to be taken out and shot as well – I always find the hyperbole of the Oscars grating, but these people deserve a little more than “Here are the nominees”, surely? Performances were all over the place – most of the musical numbers worked well and televisually (and any opportunity to see Staunton), but there was something very, very Alan Partridge about the “Best Musical Numbers of the last 40 year” (“Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd, then try a little priest” – REALLY? Plus Michael Feinstein looks like someone who’s skinned Barry Manilow’s face and pulled it too tightly over their own), Jack Savoretti’s performance could have been nice but was just a bad song (they should have taken snippets of the Rickman When Love Speaks project, possibly his sonnet or possibly just clips of him and Roger Rees and Geraldine McEwen reading, and had a music or musical star or someone like 2014’s Young Musician play underneath, that would have been far more moving and far more fitting the occasion) and every single one of those final actresses should regret what they did for love.

Can’t begrudge any of the winners, except maybe Hangmen as I didn’t love it as much as you lot whereas both Farinelli and PPT were really extraordinary and beautiful pieces of work. Particularly lovely to see Staunton, of course, and I think Gatiss has become one of our best stage actors while no-one was looking so it’s great to see him rewarded (two years after he should have been for Coriolanus). I thought the nominations this year were all over the place (David Suchet and the terrible Tom Sturridge over Streatfield and Flynn, the ‘Comedy’ category a patronising afterthought utterly discredited by the victory of a comedy in the Best Play category, Cumberbatch nominated over Heffernan, just off the top of my head...) but at least deserving winners floated to the top from a very bad assembly otherwise.

Plus, I think Dominic Dromgoole deserved the honorary award that Hytner and Starr got for leaving the successful NT and Spacey got for leaving the successful Old Vic – Dromgoole’s worked wonders for that theatre and for attracting new audiences to theatre, and to not get anything, presumably because he’s not famous or they couldn’t be arsed, is a real testimony to how terrible these awards were this year.

IF it’s going to be somewhere as glitzy as the ROH or RAH, it needs hyperbole, it needs genuine star power (specifically theatrical star power like, say, THIS YEAR’S SUPPORTING ACTOR OSCAR WINNER or esoteric choices like that) and it needs a sense of glitz throughout, and if it wants to be a fun night out for stagey types it ought to be a basement boozy supper. There was this attempt to be glitzy that felt wholly like tokenistic trying to be the Tonys (who do this much better, mostly because there’s a much better script to someone like Neil Patrick Harris’ hosting) and then this embarrassment at praising people too much. I think there’s this paradox in how the Brits do award shows (the Baftas struggle with this too) in that we want to stand up next to the glitz and glamour of the Tonys or the Oscars, but we want to preserve that British false modesty and underplaying of success, so we rent out the Opera House and bring in Dames and Knights and celebs to read an autocue knowingly underplaying the ceremony with crap like “I’m presenting this award to an actor” or just “And the nominees are...”. The ONLY thing to Oliviers do well is alphabetising the In Memoriam.

But actually I think there’s a genuinely insidious problem to the way these awards are constructed. When someone like Shirley Bassey comes on, it feels like the people behind the biggest theatre awards in the country don’t have any faith in theatre; likewise someone like Vanessa Redgrave who hasn’t been on stage in a couple of years and where no mention is made of appearing on stage again, she’s there purely because she’s famous. Last year, the script very wisely kept referencing the shows the presenters were about to be in, but this year (as with most years in these godforsaken bastard awards) it feels like the stars are being wheeled on stage to take our attention away from the grubby non-celebs off-stage (which is particularly egregious in a year when people like Bradley Cooper, Nicole Kidman, Cumberbatch, Matthew Perry for goodness’ sake are in London and on stage!). So, the impression the show gives isn’t that theatre is a glorious place of artistry or even a chance to see famous people up close; it’s that theatre’s not half as interesting as Cyndi Lauper and Michael Ball. The people behind the biggest theatre awards in the country turn away from the country to praise celebrities, pop music, and anything but theatre. It’s pathetic, it truly is.

But other than that, a good night!  And congratulations to Sir Ken and Glenda Jackson for their wins next year.