Olivier Awards 2023

Only about halfway through watching on catch-up. Just focusing on the show itself

Opening number was awful. It's like someone watched one Tony Awards and thought oh yeah let's do that, you boy, do a song about how great the West End is. The best by far the Tony's have done are where they go absolutely nuts with scale, get cameos from much loved faces and fundamentally have a laugh with the lyrics. For me if you search YouTube for Neil Patrick Harris's openings they're all great examples of what to do with it. A sort of saccharine and under-produced thing with the long running musical costumes walking in is just a bit cringey in my view and fundamentally doesn't do the two things the Oliviers should do: be a celebration for theatre lovers, or be an advertisement for the West End.

Almost every musical performance was a bit rubbish this year. I totally agree with the other comments here about the camerawork and vision mixing, but even worse for me is the sound. It's always a bit on-and-off for musical theatre performances on TV, having 20-odd microphones to deal with plus the orchestra behind them is always difficult. But every single number this year (apart from The Band's Visit because it was so much simpler) you could barely hear the ensemble voices and always had whoever had just sung a solo verse painfully prominent in the mix. It just makes the whole thing very weak, if the lead is a bit flat it's awkward to listen to and fundamentally it means the chorus never builds to the frisson-producing big finish you want.

It doesn't help that a bunch of the shows put up slightly duff numbers. Sylvia got it right, and had a big standing ovation for doing so. Tammy Faye was just nowhere near the best song in that show, Newsies probably just needed that number re-arranged and re-choreographed for the time slot they had rather than trying to cut up what was already in the show. The two half songs from Oklahoma should've just been one properly performed song. Just lot's of bits like that. SASE did alright actually, I just didn't like the score so didn't like the song they performed.

I don't mind Hannah Waddingham as a host (no doubt she benefited from the extremely harsh editing that littered the ITV version) but she should've been given her a comedy writer to just give her a bit more entertainment value.

I'm sure the reason for a lot of this is the fact that nobody has the time or money to put effort into rehearsing this properly. The Tony's benefit from the fact they're extremely important for a shows success, so the show producers will put effort and money into a good performance. The awards are better produced (although not perfect by any means) probably because there's more money floating around. No idea what budget the Oliviers get given they're relegated to a very dead slot in the schedule on ITV.

With regards to the winners, I'm still salty that Newsies got snubbed, every winner was probably deserving. Who cares, only the opinion of TheatreBoard matters, not some crusty SOLT voters.

That's right. We get a two-hour edited version on TV, or a slightly time-delayed radio broadcast. There are obviously ways around geoblocking, but the YouTube version is not available if their servers think you are in the UK.

Having been away for a week and only just had chance to watch the ceremony (cut UK version) and largely avoided spoilers, it's great to see a wide range of shows winning awards. Excellent choices all around and I'm chuffed for Arthur Darvill's best actor win.

The performances always look rather odd when they pull together random casts when shows have closed (or you spot the same performer appearing as a member of multiple shows). Newsies, I thought, was rather hurt by them having to change the dances around so much and to work within a structure that made no sense, but at least they managed to fit a lot of flips in. Contrary to others here, I thought they did a great job with Tammy Faye, a real rousing number. Songs out of place for little-known musicals are difficult.

Good to see the Arts Ed choir there too.