Nominations announced for Olivier Awards 2022 with Mastercard

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Nominations have been announced for the Olivier Awards 2022 with Mastercard, British theatre’s most prestigious honours, which take place on 10 April at the Royal Albert Hall.

Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley are both up for leading actor awards for Cabaret, a revival of the 1966 Kander and Ebb musical which has transformed the West End’s Playhouse Theatre into the ‘Kit Kat Club’ to huge critical acclaim. The production has received 11 nominations across the board - the most for a single show this year - including for director Rebecca Frecknall, supporting actors Liza Sadovy and Elliot Levey, and for Magic Radio Best Musical Revival.

Life Of Pi, Lolita Chakrabarti’s stage adaptation of the bestselling novel which began life in Sheffield in 2019 and is currently playing at the Wyndham’s Theatre, leads the field for plays with nine nominations, including Best Actor for Hiran Abeysekera in the title role and Best Supporting Actor for the seven performers who play ‘Richard Parker’, the puppet tiger - Fred Davis, Daisy Franks, Romina Hytten, Tom Larkin, Habib Nasib Nader, Tom Stacy and Scarlet Wilderink.

Also garnering nine nominations - including Best Musical Revival - is the classic Cole Porter musical Anything Goes, which broke box office records at the Barbican Theatre last summer. Broadway star Sutton Foster is nominated for Best Actress in a Musical for her role in the production, alongside Robert Lindsay, Carly Mercedes Dyer and Gary Wilmot in supporting categories, and nods for directing, choreography, orchestrations and costume design.

Back To The Future - The Musical, a new stage adaptation of the hit 1985 sci-fi film currently playing at the Adelphi Theatre, has seven nominations, including Mastercard Best New Musical, as well as Best Original Score or New Orchestrations for Grammy-winning composers Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard and orchestrators Ethan Popp and Bryan Crook. Olly Dobson is nominated for Best Actor in a Musical for his role as Marty McFly, with Hugh Coles (George McFly) up for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical.

With five nominations apiece are Moulin Rouge! The Musical, a Tony Award-winning hit which transferred to the Piccadilly Theatre and is up for Best New Musical, and the National Theatre’s production of Larry Kramer’s play The Normal Heart - set in New York’s gay community during the 1980s AIDS crisis - for which Liz Carr, Ben Daniels, Dino Fetscher and Danny Lee Wynter all receive acting nods.

Frozen is nominated for four Olivier Awards, with Stephanie McKeon up for Best Actress in a Musical for her role as Anna. Also with four nominations are Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical - a retelling of the reggae icon’s life starring Arinzé Kene and Gabrielle Brooks (both nominated themselves) - and Michael Longhurst’s star-studded Donmar Warehouse production of the Nick Payne play Constellations, which was performed by four revolving casts and has received acting nominations for Omari Douglas and Sheila Atim.

Lily Allen has received a Best Actress nomination for her West End debut in 2:22 A Ghost Story (which was also nominated for Best New Play), alongside Cush Jumbo for playing the title role in Hamlet at the Young Vic, and Emma Corrin for Anna X at the Harold Pinter Theatre, part of producer Sonia Friedman’s post-lockdown RE:EMERGE season of new plays. Among the Best Actor nominees is Charles Edwards, for his performance as Gore Vidal in James Graham’s new play Best of Enemies at the Young Vic. 

Elsewhere in the nominations, Pride And Prejudice* (*Sort Of), a comedic, all-female retelling of the Jane Austen classic first seen at the Edinburgh Fringe, is nominated three times. Cruise, Jack Holden’s Soho-set one-man play - produced by West End newcomers and one of the first shows to open post-lockdown in 2021 - is a contender for Best New Play.

In the Opera and Dance categories, nominees include English National Opera’s The Cunning Little Vixen (Best New Opera Production), mezzo soprano Christine Rice for her performance in 4/4 at the Royal Opera House (Outstanding Achievement in Opera) and De Punta A Cabo in 100% Cuban, a programme by dance superstar Carlos Acosta’s company Acosta Danza at Sadler’s Wells (Outstanding Achievement in Dance).

Commenting on the nominations, Julian Bird, Chief Executive of the Society of London Theatre and Executive Producer of the Olivier Awards, said: “I want to offer enormous congratulations to all the 2022 Olivier Awards nominees. This year’s fantastic array truly demonstrates the breadth and diversity of London’s world-leading theatre industry, and its extraordinary creativity and resilience during an extremely challenging period for our sector. After a two-year hiatus, we are delighted to be able to bring the theatre community together again to celebrate our brightest talents. I’m sure the atmosphere in the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday 10 April will be absolutely electric.”

The Olivier Awards will be hosted by Jason Manford and broadcast via official media partners ITV and Magic Radio. Further details of the ceremony will be announced soon.

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