Picture: Manuel Harlan
The 33rd Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards saw Andrew Scott net a historic win as Best Actor, the first time any performer has been named Best Actor by both the nation’s film critics and theatre critics in the same year.
His superhuman turn in VANYA, a one-man Chekov adaptation which saw him play eight different characters in conversation with each other, was lauded as virtuosic by critics. Sarah Hemming, chief theatre critic of the Financial Times, described it as “tremendously moving, dialling up the empathy at the heart of that great, humane play and at the heart of live theatre”, when she presented Scott with his award.
Scott is also receiving plaudits for his performance in Andrew Haigh’s film All of Us Strangers – in February, the film took home three awards at the Critics’ Circle Film Awards – Scott’s Best Actor gong among them. Today’s announcement makes Scott the inaugural winner of ‘the double’ at the Critics’ Circle, winning the same prize at both the Film Awards and the Theatre Awards, both of which are run by umbrella group the UK Critics’ Circle.
Sunset Boulevard – which won nearly every category in which it was nominated at February’s audience-powered WhatsOnStage Awards but missed out on the prize for Best Musical Revival – was once again pipped to the post by Nicholas Hytner’s production of Guys & Dolls, which won The Peter Hepple Award for Best Musical. An immersive interpretation of Frank Loesser’s classic, the radically restaged production transports its promenading audience from the bustling streets of 1950s New York to the heady heat of Havana in the unlikeliest of love stories. The WhatsOnStage Awards are the only awards voted for entirely by the public; the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards are the only awards show voted for entirely by critics using a secret ballot.
The critics and audiences were united once again in their praise for young actor Jack Wolfe [pictured]. A winner at the WhatsOnStage awards for his role in the Donmar Theatre’s sold-out rock musical Next to Normal, Wolfe was one of two actors awarded the Jack Tinker Award for Most Promising Newcomer. He shared it with Louis McCartney, currently leading the cast of Stranger Things: The First Shadow, a wildly popular stage-based spinoff of the Netflix series.
Jack Thorne’s The Motive and the Cue, a witty and affecting play that stages the explosive tensions between John Gielgud and Richard Burton as they rehearsed the 1964 production of Hamlet, won The Michael Billington Award for Best New Play. The Sam Mendes-directed production stars Johnny Flynn as Burton and Mark Gatiss as Gielgud, and enjoyed an acclaimed run at the National Theatre before it transferred to the West End late last year. Gatiss attended to support Thorne, who collected the award.
Stranger Things: The First Shadow also took home the Best Designer award, which was awarded to Miriam Buether with 59 Productions. The latter is the video team which supported Buether’s hugely ambitious production design and sets, praised by critics as being able to summon all the high octane, retro thrills of the Netflix series.
The Trewin Award for Best Shakespearean Performance went to David Tennant for his austere, cold-blooded performance in the Donmar Warehouse’s high-tech staging of Macbeth. Tennant was named “the greatest Shakespearean actor of his generation” by both Critics’ Circle Chair Kate Maltby and BBC Front Row presenter Samira Ahmed, who presented the award.
The prize for Best Actress went to Oscar-nominated Sophie Okonedo for her role as the titular character in @sohoplace’s Medea, a performance critics called ‘towering’. Okonedo will be hoping to repeat the victory at the 2024 Olivier Awards next month, where she is nominated in the equivalent category alongside stars including Sarah Jessica Parker (Plaza Suite) and Sarah Snook (The Picture of Dorian Gray).
Also nominated at this year’s Oliviers is the Best Director winner Rupert Goold, whose James Graham-penned production Dear England opened at the National Theatre last year to widespread acclaim. Intimate and inspiring, the play retells Gareth Southgate’s transformational leadership of the England team. Joseph Fiennes, who stars as Southgate in both the stage show and its upcoming BBC adaptation, was in attendance at the ceremony, alongside actor Will Close who took to the stage in character as England Captain Harry Kane, to accept the award on Goold’s behalf.
The award for Most Promising Playwright went jointly to Marcelo dos Santos (Backstairs Billy) and Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini, whose captivating coming-of-age play Sleepova saw 2021 BAFTA Rising Star winner Bukky Bakray make her stage debut at the Bush Theatre. The play has been praised by critics for its celebration of Black female friendship, and the tenderness with which it tackles themes of grief, chronic illness and sexuality.
Ibini, a Black, Queer writer who uses a wheelchair and describes themself as “bionic”, was also nominated for the equivalent award at the 2023 Evening Standard Awards, but lost out to Isley Lynn for The Swell. Like Okonedo, she is currently nominated for an Olivier Award for Sleepova. Ibini’s win also marks the third year running that the Critics’ Circle’s prize for Most Promising Playwright has gone to a play staged at London’s Bush Theatre, cementing the theatre’s position as a powerhouse of British new writing.
The 2024 Empty Space Peter Brook Award for an innovative venue went to the Orange Tree, Richmond. Named to honour the legacy of the late theatre director Peter Brook, this was the first UK theatre award named in Brook’s memory, curated for the Critics’ Circle by founder Blanche Marvin.
Guests in attendance at the ceremony were treated to an exclusive preview of a song from Why Am I So Single?, the forthcoming new musical from Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, creators of SIX. The song ‘Just in Case’ was performed by cast member Leesa Tulley. The preview is a return full circle for Marlow and Moss: before it went on to break records on Broadway, SIX initially previewed to critics as an unknown show at the 2017 Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards.
In attendance at the ceremony were many of this year’s winners, among them Andrew Scott (All of Us Strangers), Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda) and Jack Wolfe (Shadow and Bone). They celebrated alongside awards presenters and guests including actors Joseph Fiennes (The Handmaid’s Tale), Mark Gatiss (Sherlock), Emma Naomi (Bridgerton), Gethin Anthony (Game of Thrones), Tracey-Ann Oberman (It’s a Sin), Jamie Morton (My Dad Wrote A Porno) and Sophie Melville (The Way), writer and previous winner Zadie Smith (White Teeth; The Wife of Willesden), and industry leaders such as National Theatre director Rufus Norris, former Strictly Come Dancing judge Arlene Phillips, and producer Sonia Friedman.
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