Westend Box Office | London Tickets and Attractions » West End awards

Sam Attwater set for Dreamboats & Petticoats

Alan — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 05:33:58 +0000

Sam Attwater, recent winner of Dancing on Ice will join the cast of Dreamboats & Petticoats the Bill Kenwright production from July 18, 2011. He will play Norman a lovable rogue. Attwater is known as Leon the Eastender’s heartthrob to millions across the UK. Earlier this year he won Dancing on Ice the celebrity competition for ice skating.

From 22 July through 31 October 2009 Dreamboats & Petticoats enjoyed, at the Savoy theatre and four month run. On 6 Jan 2010 they returned to West End opening at Playhouse Theatre and are currently taking booking through 24 Nov 2012.

The show includes songs from Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison, Billy Fury, Eddie Cochran, the Shadows and many others. Maurice Gran and Laurence Marks wrote the script that was inspired by the album of the same name. Bob Tomson directs and Carole Todd is in charge of choreography.

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War Horse rides over the Tony’s

Alan — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 05:54:16 +0000

War Horse the UK export won five Awards including best play at the Tony Awards show in New York Sunday evening and the top acting award was won by Briton Mark Rylance for his role in Jerusalem. War House opened at the National Theatre moved to West End and Broadway also earned a directing award for Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris. Rylance quoted poetry when he received his award saying “walking through walls” was “a totally earth-related craft.”

The night’s big winner with nine awards was The Book of Mormon a satirical musical. War House was based on Michael Morpungo’s 1982 novel that tells the tale of a horse caught up in all the death of World War I. The play, which Steven Spielberg has made into a film, also won awards for scenery, sound and lighting and design.

The fifty-one year old Rylance won for best actor for the second time as he won in 2008 in Boeing-Boeing the revival that also was a West End transfer. The Book of Mormon, the night’s big winner, from TV’s South Park creators, centers round the adventures of two Mormon missionaries in Uganda.

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Olivier Theatre Awards honours After the Dance

Alan — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 03:59:32 +0000

Even with seventy years of neglect and an early closing, one play by Terence Rattigan came back to life, thanks to the National Theatre, and became the top winner at the 2011 Olivier Theatre Awards. Additional note goes to Stephen Sondheim’s achievements and Legally Blonde, the Musical.

Rattigan’s After the Dance, watching a group of bright people aging and partying while the nation sinks toward war, won four awards. The National, on the other hand, took seven, making it the largest win. As the hundredth year for Rattigan, many if his plays are being dug up and put on all across the nation.

The four awards for After the Dance included best actress to Nancy Carroll, best actor for a supporting role to Adrian Scarborough, best costume design to Hildgard Bechtler. Although she was pregnant, she took on the role of Joan Scott-Fowler, and received accolades from the Guardian and the Telegraph.

After the Dance had originally opened in June 1939 and the critics enjoyed the play. However, the war changed everything about the people and their attitude toward entertainment. That is the reason the play closed early and went largely unrecognised this entire time.

The National took home three awards. Howard Davies took best director, Bunny Christie received best set design, and Neil Austin was awarded best lighting. Sheridan Smith was given best actress in a musical for her portrayal of head sorority girl, Elle, in Legally Blonde, while Paulette, the hairdresser, played by Jill Halfpenny, received best supporting performer in a musical. The whole play was awarder best new musical.

It is ironic that Legally Blonde faired better in London than on Broadway. It is probably due to the weather, combined with the credit crunch and the desire to escape real life for a bit more than two hours.

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Grammy Awards performers announced

Alan — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 21:45:54 +0000

The first listing of stars performing at the 53^rd annual Grammy Awards came out in the morning of the 13^th January. The lineup looks like the who’s who of pop music stars.

By Wednesday MTV had already let the cat out of the bag that Eminem would top off the best of his years in his entire career when he steps on the Staples Center stage. He is nominated for 10 awards already. He won’t be alone up there, though.

Kate Perry, Lady Gaga, Arcade Fire, Cee Lo Green, and Miranda Lambert are also nominees. The newbies are Arcade and Lambert, while the veterans include Eminem, Cee Lo, Perry, and Lady Gaga.

As far as Eminem is concerned, this is but one of the many successes connected with his newest album Recovery, up for Top Album of the Year. He had two hit singles off this album, including “Love the Way You Lie” and “Not Afraid”. The former featured Rihanna. Eminem has more nominations than any other performer and will undoubtedly take more awards than he did in 2009, when he merely received recognition for his Best Rap Album, Relapse.

The Grammy Awards have given Eminem center place in their ad campaign. He is the star of their 30-second commercial sweeping across his musical career. It takes us from the death of Proof, his close friend, through his collapse into drug abuse, and out again to his shot back up to the top.

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Jeff Goldblum to be West End prisoner

Alan — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 13:05:24 +0000

Jeff Goldblum is scheduled to be the star of his second West End Play at the Old Vic; it will be The Prisoner of Second Avenue by Neil Simon.

The play is scheduled to open on July 13^th at the Vaudeville Theatre with the Old Vic to be put to use in the Sam Mendes’ Bridge Project.

This is Goldblum’s first step onto the London stage since 2008 when he appeared beside Kevin Spacey in an Old Vic production of the play Speed the Plow, which he described at the time as a ‘delicious experience.’

Terry Johnson is slated to direct the play who already has several awards under his belt both as a director and a playwright.

Goldblum will portray the character of Mel on the stage that loses his job and then has a nervous breakdown.

Mendes will return to the Old Vic for his second year in The Bridge Project, which will start on June 12^th and run through August 21st. During this time period his theatre group of American and British actors will be directed through two plays by Shakespeare, The Tempest and As You Like It.

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Brits receive many Tony nominations

Alan — Sat, 08 May 2010 03:25:30 +0000

Two small theatres in London, the Donmar Warehouse and the Menier Chocolate Factory, received a big boost when they led the nominations for the Tony theatre awards, which were announced this week.

La Cage aux Folles from Terry Johnson leads the list of top nominations along with Fela!, with 11 nominations crowning a life that began at the Southwark Chocolate Factory before hitting the West End. Included in La Cage aux Folles nods are nominations for Zaza/Albin and Kelsey Grammar in the role Georges.

Following close behind, winning acclaim for the Southwark theatre where it started out, was A Little Night Music from Stephen Sondheim, which received four nods including one each for Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury.

Producer of La Cage aux Folles, Sonia Friedman, said that the success of the play at the Chocolate Factory prompting it to continue on to Broadway and the West End is due to the vision of the play’s artistic director David Babani because of the way he used the set to tell the story.

Friedman continued to say that it was a gamble, but she is thrilled that the play received such high accolades, and is thrilled for everyone involved.

Also worth mentioning is the Donmar Warehouse Red production, which received seven nominations.

The most interesting category to watch however may be the best acting category, which this year will include Jude Law, Denzel Washington, Alfred Molina, Liv Schreiber, and Christopher Walken. For the best actress category, the Americans stole the nominee list, which includes Laura Linney, Valerie Harper, Viola Davis, Jan Maxwell, and Linda Lavin.

The Tony award ceremony will take place on June 13^th, with another Brit, Alan Ayckbourn receiving the lifetime achievement award and David Hyde Pierce taking home an award to honour his work with charities for Alzheimer’s.

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All surprises at Olivier Awards

Alan — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 08:36:19 +0000

Although the world of theatre should be used to fate reversals and plot twists, most of the British stage stars were still surprised by the outcome of the Olivier Awards as many unexpected winners made it up to the podium, while some previously predicted shoe-ins such as Keira Knightly and Jude Law stayed in their seats.

Even the Royal Court which was thought to be a sure thing for the Best New Play category lost the award to a Battersea pub theatre.

The winning play by Katori Hall was titled the Mountaintop and was a reconstruction of the night that Martin Luther King Jr. spent in his hotel before his assassination. It stole the award from the crowd favorites, Jerusalem and Lucy by Jez Butterworth and Enron by Lucy Prebble. This was Hall’s second play and the first play by her to make it onto the West End stage.

The win by Hall was also monumental given the fact that she is the first black woman to ever receive the award for Best New Play since the inception of the awards in 1976, and only the fourth female. The first black male writer to take an award was August Wilson in 2002.

Hall’s win should make her an international playwright from here on out with The Mountaintop already scheduled to debut on Broadway.

The newly acclaimed writer was overcome and surprised by her win stating that she did not even think that at age 28 she would ever have a shot at an Olivier.

Although the play debuted in London, Hall is originally from Memphis, TN in the US prompting her to say that it’s ironic that she made it big in London with a play about a historic American figure.

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Hollywood stars lead West End award nominations

Alan — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:26:33 +0000

Yesterday the West End’s power to get A list talent was once again proven by the fact that many of the Laurence Olivier Awards nominees could just as easily been nominated for an Oscar.

Among those on the list for Best Actress and Best Actor are Jude Law, James Earl Jones, Rachel Weisz, and Imelda Staunton. Each of these has either been nominated or won an Oscar in the past. Another Oscar nominee, Keira Knightley, was nominated for Best Supporting Actress this year as well for her role in The Misanthrope.

Additionally, three more Olivier Award nominees- Juliet Stevenson, James McAvoy, and Sam West- have also been nominated in the past for a Bafta film award, which is also prestigious. Although there are usually a few Hollywood A listers on the Olivier nod list, very rarely are there so many within one year.

Favoured winners for Best Actor this year are Sam West for his role in Enron and Mark Rylance for his role in Jerusalem. Both of these plays were produced at the Royal Court Theatre, which leads the Olivier’s in terms of most nods by a production team with a total of 15. Following close behind are the Donmar Warehouse, which secured ten, and the National Theatre which secured nine.

Of particular note is the fact that her appearance in The Misanthrope was Keira Knightley’s first appearance on the West End stage, which has many wondering if she was nominated for her work in Hollywood or her actual performance.

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