When asked how it felt to hold her very own Olivier award, Eleanor Cox-Worthington (aged 10) said, “very heavy.” She was one of the quartet of tiny actresses in Matilda: The Musical who share the title role of the miracle Miss with a serious Dickens habit and a poltergeist streak. They could have been – but weren’t – precious nightmares of child-star awfulness. They made history at last night’s Oliviers as the youngest ever winners.
Oliviers are for sharing: not only was Best Actress in a Musical split four ways, but Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller divvied up the Best Actor’s award for alternating the roles of Frankenstein and his monster at the National Theatre. The night I saw the show, a primal, supercharged Cumberbatch played the Creature, leaving Lee Miller to do little more than act the stuffed shirt. Out of the production’s epic scale (you could almost smell the foundry and the charnel house in the scientific age of steam and gas) Cumberbatch scored a thrilling, visceral intimacy.
It was quite the record-breaking night for the RSC: Matilda waltzed off with an embarrassment of Larrys (seven altogether), beating the previous record, also set by the RSC, for The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby in 1980.
Adapted from Roald Dahl’s twisted story with a dappled wit and warmth by Dennis Kelly, and set to lyrical, satirical music from Tim Minchin, this fizzing sherbert-dip of a show bagged the award for Best New Musical. The magnificent Bertie Carvel, as Matilda’s frigidly upholstered headmistress Miss Trunchbull, took home Best Actor in a Musical, and Matthew Warchus nabbed Best Director. Peter Darling picked up another award for the show’s crisp choreography, pipping both the rippled smoothness of Andrew Wright’s hommage to 1950’s MGM, Singin in the Rain, and Javier de Frutos’s clean and clever ensemble work in London Road. There were further accolades for Simon Baker’s sound and Rob Howell’s set – an enchanted Aladdin’s cave with letters and words for treasure.
I could have wished that the innovatory zest of London Road, the National’s sung-through documentary musical, was better recognised. But at least Nigel Harman, my guilty pleasure, picked up Best Supporting Performance in a Musical. His Lilliputian Lord Farquaad in Shrek was a diminutive, crowd-pleasing cracker.
Pleasing, also, to see Bruno Poet pick up the lighting award for Frankenstein. His onstage bruised and Blakean tints were counterweighed by a mighty glacier of bulbs, raked over the auditorium, and alternatively strobed with lightening, electricity and starlight. Blazingly good.
Bizarrely, the mandarins at SOLT (Society of West End Theatres), gave the porcineophile Betty Blue Eyes three nominations, including Best New Musical. Betty rather failed to bring home the bacon for Cameron Mackintosh, and closed after six months. Surely this demonstrates a critical bubble that’s gaily disengaged from actual audiences on the ground. Betty came home empty-handed, however.
As did the National’s big bucks piñata One Man Two Guvnors. In an underweight category, which also included the wryly observant Jumpy at the Royal Court, the Mastercard Best New Play went to John Hodge’s The Collaborators.
Ruth Wilson got Best Actress for Anna Christie, ahead of Marcia Warren, the “wraith in a pinny” from The Ladykillers, and Kristen Scott Thomas’s pinched and porcelain turn in Betrayal. And a big footnote to Sheridan Smith, who now has a brace of Oliviers for the mantlepiece. This year’s was for Performance in a Supporting Role in the otherwise damp squib Flarepath. She was the magnetic north of the show, and the very best exponent of the Rattigan restrained but heroic British resilience in the face of trauma. Her amiable chat as ex-barmaid Doris, her squawks of “dears” and “ducks,” scarcely papered over the well of feeling for her Polish airman husband.
Smith has the art of appearing artless. The mini Matildas – who have had to give up ice-cream for the sake of their voices – may well walk in her footsteps. When they grow up.
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