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Dateline: 27th January, 2010
Critics' Circle Theatre Awards - the Ceremony Jude Law, Rachel Weisz and Mark Rylance, who each enjoyed great success in the West End in 2009, were the starry winners of this year's Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards, each happily turning up to collect their awards despite the rival attraction of the final Melvyn Bragg, South Bank prizegiving elsewhere in London. These annual awards, first presented in 1989, represent the outcome of personal votes cast by members of the Circle’s Drama section for the best in UK theatre. The presentation ceremony, held at the Prince of Wales Theare in London, was briskly introduced by section chairman Mark Shenton as MC, plus the usual impudent comedy interlude given by the irrepressible Arthur Smith who, with the Pinteresque "Must you go?" as his catchphrase, delivered droll observations about the critics between a series of outrageous jokes. By coincidence two of this year's starry winning performances were linked by the design award winner, Christopher Oram. He created the sets for Hamlet at Wyndham’s, which won Law his Trewin award for best Shakespearean performance, and also for A Streetcar Named Desire at the Donmar Warehouse, a production which featured best actress Miss Weisz as a tragic but youthful Blanche Dubois. But in fact it was the eye-catching setting for Red, a Donmar play about the life and work of the artist Rothke, that won him his own design award. Rylance was declared best actor for his astonishing tour de force at the Royal Court as the Wiltshire lord of misrule in Jez Butterworth’s dark comedy Jerusalem, which also won best new play for its author, happily coinciding with its transfer to the West End; while another Royal Court success was Lucy Prebble’s acclaimed Enron, co-presented with the Minerva in Chichester, which gained the 2009 best director award for Rupert Goold. Best musical winner was Spring Awakening, praised on Broadway and at the Lyric Hammersmith as well as by a very enthusiastic Ian Shuttleworth from the FT, but which had only a short run when it transferred to the Novello, while the Lyric also became the metropolitan venue for the Royal Exchange Manchester production of Punk Rock gaining Tom Sturridge his most promising newcomer award. Finally Alia Bano was named most promising playwright for her Shades, staged at the Royal Court Upstairs, a tender tale of young Muslims in London looking for romantic love, described by Michael Billington as one of the best plays that he saw last year. But for Benedict Nightingale's Drama section colleagues there was a particularly touching moment, greeted with affectionate applause, when this much admired critic briefly announced his imminent plan to retire from full-time reviewing for The Times, while happily revealing that he also intends to continue writing for the paper. Someone, perhaps cheekily, also suggested that perhaps Libby Purves might have her eye on the upcoming vacancy - but Times alone will tell. John Thaxter See our early report of yesterday afternoon for the full list of winners and links to the productions.
Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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