A reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sundown Boulevard,” starring Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond, the lengthy forgotten silent film star who descends into insanity, was the large winner at this 12 months’s Olivier Awards, Britain’s equal of the Tonys.
The musical, which is able to open on the St. James Theater on Broadway this fall, was honored Sunday throughout a ceremony on the Royal Albert Corridor in London with seven awards, together with finest musical revival, finest actress in a musical for Scherzinger, finest actor in a musical for Tom Francis, because the screenwriter who falls for Desmond’s charms, and finest director for Jamie Lloyd.
The variety of awards was hardly a shock. After the musical opened final fall, critics praised Lloyd’s stark manufacturing, particularly highlighting its up to date twists that included utilizing cameras to zoom in on characters’ faces, then beam their feelings onto a display in the back of the stage.
Matt Wolf, writing in The New York Instances, mentioned that Lloyd’s manufacturing belonged firmly “to the right here and now.” With this present, the director “takes a longtime musical by the scruff of the neck and sends it careering into the fashionable day,” Wolf added.
Sarah Hemming, in The Monetary Instances, was among the many critics to reward Scherzinger’s magnetic efficiency. “She’s not afraid to look scary or ridiculous,” Hemming mentioned, “however there’s additionally a strung-out vulnerability about her. And when she sings, she pins you to your seat with the harrowing depth of her supply.”
“Sundown Boulevard” beat a number of different acclaimed productions to one of the best musical revival award, together with “Guys & Dolls” on the Bridge Theater and “Hadestown” on the Lyric Theater.
A bunch of musicals and performs shared the night time’s different main prizes. “Operation Mincemeat,” a word-of-mouth hit a few weird World Conflict II counterintelligence plot that’s working on the Fortune Theater, received finest new musical. Whereas “Stranger Issues: The First Shadow,” a prequel to the Netflix present, now on the Phoenix Theater, was chosen as finest new leisure or comedy play.
The very best new play award went to James Graham’s “Pricey England,” concerning the English nationwide soccer staff, which transferred to the West Finish from the Nationwide Theater.
Within the hotly contested appearing classes, Sarah Snook (“Succession”) was named finest actress for “The Image of Dorian Grey,” a solo present working by Could 11 on the Theater Royal Haymarket. Snook performs all 26 roles, usually interacting with recorded projections of her characters.
Earlier than Sunday’s ceremony, some critics had anticipated one of the best actor award to go to Andrew Scott for a equally dazzling solo efficiency: a one-man “Vanya” on the Duke of York’s Theater. Ultimately, the prize went to Mark Gatiss for his position because the revered actor and director John Gielgud in “The Motive and the Cue,” a play by Jack Thorne that dramatizes the fraught backstage relationship between Gielgud and Richard Burton as they labored on a Broadway present. Like “Pricey England,” that play ran on the Nationwide Theater earlier than transferring to the West Finish.
