London Critics' Circle Theatre Awards
Encyclopedia
The Critics' Circle Theatre Awards, originally called Drama Theatre Awards prior to 1989, are British theatrical awards presented annually for the closing year's theatrical achievements. The winners, from theatre throughout the United Kingdom, are selected via vote by the professional theatre critics of The Critics' Circle
The Critics' Circle
The Critics' Circle is a professional association of British critics of dance, drama, film, music, visual arts and architecture. It was established in 1913 as an offshoot of the Society of Dramatic Critics, which had been formed six years earlier but had become inactive.For many years the Circle...

.

2010 awards

Critics' Circle Theatre Awards for 2010, presented at the Prince of Wales Theatre, 25 January 2011:
  • Best New Play: Clybourne Park
    Clybourne Park
    Clybourne Park is a 2010 play by Bruce Norris written in response to Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun portraying fictional events set before and after the play and loosely based on real life events. The premiere took place in February 2010 at Playwrights Horizons in New York. The play...

    by Bruce Norris
    Bruce Norris
    Bruce Arthur Norris was owner of the Detroit Red Wings from 1952 to 1982. He was the son of James E. Norris and half-brother of James D. Norris. Members of the Norris family owned the Red Wings for almost fifty years before selling the franchise to Mike Ilitch in 1982. Bruce and Marguerite Norris...

     (Royal Court Theatre)
  • Best Actor: David Suchet
    David Suchet
    David Suchet, CBE, is an English actor, known for his work on British television. He is recognised for his RTS- and BPG award-winning performance as Augustus Melmotte in the 2001 British TV mini-drama The Way We Live Now, alongside Matthew Macfadyen and Paloma Baeza, and a 1991 British Academy...

     for All My Sons
    All My Sons
    All My Sons is a 1947 play by Arthur Miller. The play was twice adapted for film; in 1948, and again in 1987.The play opened on Broadway at the Coronet Theatre in New York City on January 29, 1947, closed on November 8, 1947 and ran for 328 performances...

    (Apollo Theatre)
  • Best Actress: Jenny Jules for Ruined
    Ruined (play)
    Ruined is a play by Lynn Nottage. The play won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.The play involves the plight of women in the civil war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.-Production history:...

  • Best Shakespearean Performance: Derek Jacobi
    Derek Jacobi
    Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE is an English actor and film director.A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in...

     for King Lear
    King Lear
    King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...

    and David Tennant
    David Tennant
    David Tennant is a Scottish actor. In addition to his work in theatre, including a widely praised Hamlet, Tennant is best known for his role as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who, along with the title role in the 2005 TV serial Casanova and as Barty Crouch, Jr...

     for David Tennant
    David Tennant
    David Tennant is a Scottish actor. In addition to his work in theatre, including a widely praised Hamlet, Tennant is best known for his role as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who, along with the title role in the 2005 TV serial Casanova and as Barty Crouch, Jr...

     for
    Hamlet
    Hamlet
    The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

  • Best Director: Michael Grandage
    Michael Grandage
    Michael Grandage CBE is a British theatre director and producer, and current Artistic Director at the Donmar Warehouse, London. Grandage won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for Red.-Early years:...

     for
    King Lear (Donmar Warehouse) and Thea Sharrock
    Thea Sharrock
    Thea Sharrock is an award-winning English theatre director. In 2001, when at age 24 she became artistic director of London's Southwark Playhouse, she was the youngest artistic director in British theatre....

     for
    After the Dance
    After the Dance (play)
    After the Dance is a play by Terence Rattigan which premièred at the St James's Theatre, London, on 21 June 1939. It was not one of Rattigan's more successful plays, closing after only sixty performances, a failure that led to its exclusion from his first volume of Collected Plays...

    (National Theatre)
  • Best Musical: Matilda
    Matilda (musical)
    Matilda is a musical written by Dennis Kelly with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin. It is based on the children's novel of the same name by Roald Dahl. The musical was performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company starting in December 2010 and running through January 2011...

    (Courtyard Theatre)
  • Most Promising Playwright: Anya Reiss
    Anya Reiss
    Anya Reiss is an award-winning British playwright who has also voiced ambitions to become an actress. She is the youngest playwright ever to have had a play staged in London....

     for
    Spur of the Moment
    Spur of the Moment (play)
    Spur of the Moment is the debut play from Anya Reiss who wrote it at age 17. It premiered at the Royal Court Theatre London in 2010 and was directed by Jeremy Herrin.-Plot:...

  • Best Designer: Bunny Christie for The White Guard (National Theatre)
  • Most Promising Newcomer: Daniel Kaluuya
    Daniel Kaluuya
    Daniel Kaluuya is an English actor, comedian and writer, who is best known for playing Posh Kenneth in the E4 teen-drama Skins. He has most recently been seen starring in the BBC dark comedy series Psychoville playing Michael Fry and Mac in the new BBC 3's horror drama The Fades.-Biography:Kaluuya...

     for
    Sucker Punch (Royal Court)

Best New Play

  • 2010 – Clybourne Park
    Clybourne Park
    Clybourne Park is a 2010 play by Bruce Norris written in response to Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun portraying fictional events set before and after the play and loosely based on real life events. The premiere took place in February 2010 at Playwrights Horizons in New York. The play...

    by Bruce Norris
    Bruce Norris
    Bruce Arthur Norris was owner of the Detroit Red Wings from 1952 to 1982. He was the son of James E. Norris and half-brother of James D. Norris. Members of the Norris family owned the Red Wings for almost fifty years before selling the franchise to Mike Ilitch in 1982. Bruce and Marguerite Norris...

  • 2009 – Jerusalem
    Jerusalem (play)
    Jerusalem is a play by Jez Butterworth that opened at the downstairs theatre of the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2009. The production starred Mark Rylance as Johnny 'Rooster' Byron and Mackenzie Crook as Ginger. After receiving rave reviews its run was extended. In January 2010 it transferred...

    by Jez Butterworth
    Jez Butterworth
    Jeremy “Jez” Butterworth is an English dramatist and film director.-Life and career:Butterworth was born in London, England, and attended Verulam Comprehensive School, St Albans and St John's College, Cambridge...

  • 2008 – August: Osage County
    August: Osage County
    August: Osage County is a darkly comedic play by Tracy Letts. It was the recipient of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago on 28 June 2007, and closed on 26 August 2007. Its Broadway debut was at the Imperial Theater on 4 December 2007 and...

    by Tracy Letts
    Tracy Letts
    Tracy Letts is an American playwright and actor who received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play August: Osage County.-Biography:...

  • 2007 – A Disappearing Number
    A Disappearing Number
    A Disappearing Number is a 2007 play co-written and devised by the Théâtre de Complicité company and directed and conceived by English playwright Simon McBurney. It was inspired by the collaboration during the 1910s between two of the most remarkable pure mathematicians of the twentieth century,...

    by Simon McBurney
    Simon McBurney
    Simon Montagu McBurney, OBE is an English actor, writer and director. He is the founder and artistic director of Théâtre de Complicité in England, now called Complicite.-Early life:...

     and Complicite
  • 2006 – Rock'n'Roll
    Rock 'n' Roll (play)
    Rock 'n' Roll is a play by British playwright Tom Stoppard that premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2006.-Plot summary:The play is concerned with the significance of rock and roll in the emergence of the socialist movement in Eastern Bloc Czechoslovakia between the Prague Spring of...

    by Tom Stoppard
    Tom Stoppard
    Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...

  • 2005 – Harvest by Richard Bean
    Richard Bean
    Richard Bean, born in East Hull in 1956, is an English playwright.-Early years:Bean studied Social Psychology at Loughborough University of Science and Technology and graduated with a 2-1 BSc Hons, and went on to become an occupational psychologist, having previously worked in a bread plant for a...

  • 2004 – The History Boys
    The History Boys
    The History Boys is a play by British playwright Alan Bennett. The play premiered at the Lyttelton Theatre in London on 18 May 2004. Its Broadway debut was on 23 April 2006 at the Broadhurst Theatre where there were 185 performances staged before it closed on 1 October 2006.The play won multiple...

    by Alan Bennett
    Alan Bennett
    Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research mediaeval history at the university for several years...

  • 2003 – Democracy
    Democracy (play)
    Democracy is a play by Michael Frayn which premiered at the Royal National Theatre on September 9, 2003, directed by Michael Blakemore, starring Roger Allam as Willy Brandt and Conleth Hill as Günter Guillaume...

    by Michael Frayn
    Michael Frayn
    Michael J. Frayn is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy...

  • 2002 – The York Realist
    The York Realist
    The York Realist is a 2001 play by Peter Gill. It was premiered at the Lowry in November 2001 before moving to the Bristol Old Vic and the Royal Court Theatre in January 2002 by English Touring Theatre, with Gill himself directing...

    by Peter Gill
    Peter Gill (playwright)
    Peter Gill, theatre director, playwright and former actor, was born in Cardiff, Wales, on 7 September 1939, son of George John Gill and his wife Margaret Mary .He was educated at St Illtyd's College, Cardiff.-Career:...

  • 2001 – Humble Boy
    Humble Boy
    Humble Boy is a 2001 English play by Charlotte Jones. The play was presented in association with Matthew Byam Shaw and Anna Mackmin, and was first performed on the Cottesloe stage of the Royal National Theatre on August 9, 2001. [1]-Background:...

    by Charlotte Jones
    Charlotte Jones (writer)
    Charlotte Jones is a British actress and playwright.Her first play Airswimming debuted in 1997 at the Battersea Arts Centre in London. Her other plays include In Flame, The Dark, The Lightning Play, and Humble Boy...

  • 2000 – Blue/Orange
    BLUE/ORANGE
    Blue/Orange is a play by written by English dramatist, Joe Penhall. A sardonically comic piece which touches on race, mental illness, and 21st century British life, it premiered at the Cottesloe Theatre in April 2000, starring Bill Nighy, Andrew Lincoln and Chiwetel Ejiofor...

    by Joe Penhall
    Joe Penhall
    Joe Penhall is a British playwright and screenwriter.Born in London, his first major play was Some Voices for the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1994, which won the John Whiting Award. It has twice been revived off Broadway...

  • 1999 – Mnemonic by Simon McBurney
    Simon McBurney
    Simon Montagu McBurney, OBE is an English actor, writer and director. He is the founder and artistic director of Théâtre de Complicité in England, now called Complicite.-Early life:...

  • 1998 – Copenhagen
    Copenhagen (play)
    Copenhagen is a play by Michael Frayn, based around an event that occurred in Copenhagen in 1941, a meeting between the physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. It debuted in London in 1998...

    by Michael Frayn
    Michael Frayn
    Michael J. Frayn is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy...

  • 1997 – Closer
    Closer (play)
    Closer is the third play written by English playwright Patrick Marber. The play was premiered at the Royal National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre in London in 1997, and made its North American debut at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway on 25 January 1999....

    by Patrick Marber
    Patrick Marber
    Patrick Albert Crispin Marber is an English comedian, playwright, director, puppeteer, actor and screenwriter.-Early life and education:...

  • 1996 – Blinded by the Sun by Stephen Poliakoff
    Stephen Poliakoff
    Stephen Poliakoff, CBE, FRSL is an acclaimed British playwright, director and scriptwriter, widely judged amongst Britain's foremost television dramatists.-Early life and career:...

  • 1995 – The Steward of Christendom
    The Steward of Christendom
    The Steward of Christendom is a 1995 play written by Irish playwright Sebastian Barry. Its story is about one Thomas Dunne, which was the name of Barry's great-grandfather, who is loyal to the British Crown during the Irish War of Independence and suffers accordingly.-Plot summary:The play opens...

    by Sebastian Barry
    Sebastian Barry
    Sebastian Barry is an Irish playwright, novelist, and poet. He has been shortlisted twice for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction and has won the 2008 Costa Book of the Year....

  • 1994 – Dead Funny by Terry Johnson
    Terry Johnson (dramatist)
    Terry Johnson is a British dramatist and director working for stage, television and film. He is a Literary Associate at the Royal Court Theatre. At The Court he directed Dumb Show by Joe Penhall and opened his play Piano/Forte...

  • 1993 – Arcadia
    Arcadia (play)
    Arcadia is a 1993 play by Tom Stoppard concerning the relationship between past and present and between order and disorder and the certainty of knowledge...

    by Tom Stoppard
    Tom Stoppard
    Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...

  • 1992 – Angels in America
    Angels in America
    Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is the 1993 Pulitzer Prize winning play in two parts by American playwright Tony Kushner. It has been made into both a television miniseries and an opera by Peter Eötvös.-Characters:...

    by Tony Kushner
    Tony Kushner
    Anthony Robert "Tony" Kushner is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and co-authored with Eric Roth the screenplay for the 2005 film, Munich.-Life and career:Kushner was born...

  • 1991 – Three Birds Alighting on a Field
    Three Birds Alighting on a Field
    Three Birds Alighting on a Field is a 1992 play by Timberlake Wertenbaker. Set in the 1980s, it tells the story of various characters associated with a failing art gallery and an opera house, and their attempts improve their prestige....

    by Timberlake Wertenbaker
    Timberlake Wertenbaker
    - Biography :Wertenbaker grew up in the Basque Country of France near Saint-Jean-de-Luz. She attended schools in Europe and the US before settling permanently in London...

  • 1990 – Racing Demon
    Racing Demon (play)
    Racing Demon is a 1990 play by English playwright David Hare. Part of a trio of plays about British institutions, it focuses on the Church of England, and tackles issues such as gay ordination, and the role of evangelism in inner-city communities...

    by David Hare
    David Hare (dramatist)
    Sir David Hare is an English playwright and theatre and film director.-Early life:Hare was born in St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex, the son of Agnes and Clifford Hare, a sailor. He was educated at Lancing, an independent school in West Sussex, and at Jesus College, Cambridge...

  • 1989 – Ghetto
    Ghetto (play)
    Ghetto is a play by Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol about the experiences of the Jews of the Vilna Ghetto during Nazi occupation in World War II. The play focuses on the Jewish theatre in the ghetto, incorporating live music and including as characters historical figures such as Jacob Gens, the...

    by Joshua Sobol
    Yehoshua Sobol
    Joshua Sobol, also known as Yehoshua Sobol , is an Israeli playwright, writer, and director at theatres in Israel and abroad.He is married to Edna, set and costume designer...

  • 1988 – The Secret Rapture
    The Secret Rapture (play)
    The Secret Rapture is a 1988 British play by David Hare. Its premiere in the Lyttelton auditorium of the Royal National Theatre was directed by Howard Davies. British revivals of the play have included one at the Salisbury Playhouse in 2001 and at the Lyric Theatre, London in 2003...

    by David Hare
    David Hare (playwright)
    Sir David Hare is an English playwright and theatre and film director.-Early life:Hare was born in St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex, the son of Agnes and Clifford Hare, a sailor. He was educated at Lancing, an independent school in West Sussex, and at Jesus College, Cambridge...

  • 1987 – (tie) Curtains
    Curtains (musical)
    Curtains is a musical with a book by Rupert Holmes, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and music by John Kander, with additional lyrics by Kander and Holmes....

    by Rupert Holmes
    Rupert Holmes
    Rupert Holmes is an American-British composer, singer-songwriter, musician and author of plays, novels and stories. He is best known for his number one pop hit "Escape " and the song "Him", which reached the number 6 position on the Hot 100 U.S. pop chart in 1980...

    , Fred Ebb
    Fred Ebb
    Fred Ebb was an American musical theatre lyricist who had many successful collaborations with composer John Kander. The Kander and Ebb team frequently wrote for such performers as Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera....

     and John Kander
    John Kander
    John Harold Kander is the American composer of a number of musicals as part of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb.-Life and career:Kander was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of Bernice and Harold S. Kander...

  • 1987 – (tie) Fashion
  • 1986 – Road
    Road (play)
    Road is the first play written by Jim Cartwright, and was first produced in 1986.The play explores the lives of the people in a deprived, working class area of Lancashire during the government of Margaret Thatcher, a time of high unemployment in the north of England...

    by Jim Cartwright
    Jim Cartwright
    Jim Cartwright is an English dramatist, born at Farnworth, Lancashire, England. Cartwright's first play, Road, won a number of awards before being adapted for TV and broadcast by the BBC....

  • 1985 – A Chorus of Disapproval
    A Chorus of Disapproval (play)
    A Chorus of Disapproval is a 1984 play written by English playwright Alan Ayckbourn.-Synopsis:The story follows a young widower, Guy Jones, as he joins an amateur operatic society that is putting on The Beggar's Opera. He rapidly progresses through the ranks to become the male lead, while...

    by Alan Ayckbourn
    Alan Ayckbourn
    Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their...

  • 1984 – One for the Road by Harold Pinter
    Harold Pinter
    Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...

  • 1982 – A Kind of Alaska
    A Kind of Alaska
    A Kind of Alaska is a one-act play written in 1982 by Harold Pinter , the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature.-Summary:A middle-aged woman named Deborah, who has been in a comatose state for thirty years as a result of contracting sleeping sickness, awakes with a mind still that of a sixteen-year-old...


Best Actor

  • 2010 – David Suchet
    David Suchet
    David Suchet, CBE, is an English actor, known for his work on British television. He is recognised for his RTS- and BPG award-winning performance as Augustus Melmotte in the 2001 British TV mini-drama The Way We Live Now, alongside Matthew Macfadyen and Paloma Baeza, and a 1991 British Academy...

     for
    All My Sons
    All My Sons
    All My Sons is a 1947 play by Arthur Miller. The play was twice adapted for film; in 1948, and again in 1987.The play opened on Broadway at the Coronet Theatre in New York City on January 29, 1947, closed on November 8, 1947 and ran for 328 performances...

  • 2009 – Mark Rylance
    Mark Rylance
    Mark Rylance is an English actor, theatre director and playwright.As an actor, Rylance found success on stage and screen. For his work in theatre he has won Olivier and Tony Awards among others, and a BAFTA TV Award...

     for
    Jerusalem
  • 2008 – Kenneth Branagh
    Kenneth Branagh
    Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland. He is best known for directing and starring in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays including Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from...

     for
    Ivanov
  • 2007 – Charles Dance
    Charles Dance
    Walter Charles Dance, OBE is an English actor, screenwriter and director. Dance typically plays assertive bureaucrats or villains. His most famous roles are Guy Perron in The Jewel in the Crown , Dr Clemens, the doctor of penitentiary Fury 161, who becomes Ellen Ripley's confidante in Alien 3 ,...

     for
    Shadowlands
    Shadowlands
    Shadowlands is a 1985 television film, written by William Nicholson, directed by Norman Stone and produced by David M. Thompson for BBC Wales. Its subject is the relationship between Oxford don and author, C. S. Lewis and Joy Gresham....

  • 2006 – Rufus Sewell
    Rufus Sewell
    Rufus Frederik Sewell is an English actor. In film, he has appeared in The Woodlanders, Dangerous Beauty, Dark City, A Knight's Tale, The Illusionist, Tristan and Isolde, and Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence. On television, he starred in the 2010 mini-series The Pillars of the Earth...

     for
    Rock'n'Roll
    Rock 'n' Roll (play)
    Rock 'n' Roll is a play by British playwright Tom Stoppard that premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2006.-Plot summary:The play is concerned with the significance of rock and roll in the emergence of the socialist movement in Eastern Bloc Czechoslovakia between the Prague Spring of...

  • 2005 – Simon Russell Beale
    Simon Russell Beale
    Simon Russell Beale, CBE is an English actor. He has been described by The Independent as "the greatest stage actor of his generation."-Early years:...

     for
    The Philanthropist
    The Philanthropist
    The Philanthropist is a quarterly academic journal devoted to the legal, management and accounting issues facing charitable and not-for-profit organizations in Canada. It was founded as an occasional publication of the Trusts and Estates Section of the Canadian Bar Association - Ontario in...

  • 2004 – Richard Griffiths
    Richard Griffiths
    Richard Griffiths, OBE is an English actor of stage, film and television. He has received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Featured Actor and a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor...

     for
    The History Boys
    The History Boys
    The History Boys is a play by British playwright Alan Bennett. The play premiered at the Lyttelton Theatre in London on 18 May 2004. Its Broadway debut was on 23 April 2006 at the Broadhurst Theatre where there were 185 performances staged before it closed on 1 October 2006.The play won multiple...

  • 2003 – Michael Sheen
    Michael Sheen
    Michael Christopher Sheen, OBE , is a Welsh stage and screen actor. He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, England and made his professional debut opposite Vanessa Redgrave in When She Danced at the Globe Theatre in 1991...

     for
    Caligula
    Caligula (play)
    Caligula is a play written by Albert Camus, begun in 1938 and published for the first time in May 1944 by Éditions Gallimard. The play was later the subject of numerous revisions. It was part of what the author called the "Cycle of the Absurd", with the novel The Outsider and the essay The Myth...

  • 2002 – Simon Russell Beale
    Simon Russell Beale
    Simon Russell Beale, CBE is an English actor. He has been described by The Independent as "the greatest stage actor of his generation."-Early years:...

     for
    Uncle Vanya
    Uncle Vanya
    Uncle Vanya is a play by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It was first published in 1897 and received its Moscow première in 1899 in a production by the Moscow Art Theatre, under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski....

  • 2001 – Ian McDiarmid
    Ian McDiarmid
    Ian McDiarmid is a Scottish theatre actor and director, who has also made sporadic appearances on film and television.McDiarmid has had a successful career in theatre; he has been cast in many plays, while occasionally directing others and although he has appeared mostly in theatrical productions,...

     for
    Faith Healer
    Faith Healer
    Faith Healer is a play by Brian Friel about the life of faith healer Francis Hardy as monologued through the shifting memories of Hardy, his wife, Grace, and stage manager, Teddy.-Synopsis:...

  • 2000 – Michael Gambon
    Michael Gambon
    Sir Michael John Gambon, CBE is an Irish actor who has worked in theatre, television and film. A highly respected theatre actor, Gambon is recognised for his roles as Philip Marlowe in the BBC television serial The Singing Detective, as Jules Maigret in the 1990s ITV serial Maigret, and as...

     for
    The Caretaker
    The Caretaker
    The Caretaker is a play by Harold Pinter. It was first published by both Encore Publishing and Eyre Methuen in 1960. The sixth play that Pinter wrote for stage or television production, it was his first significant commercial success...

  • 1999 – Henry Goodman
    Henry Goodman
    Henry Goodman is a British theatre actor. He trained at RADA in London alongside Jonathan Pryce.In 1988, he played George Green's brother-in-law Cyril in London's Burning. He played character roles in episodes of the popular UK police drama The Bill...

     for
    The Merchant of Venice
    The Merchant of Venice
    The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...

  • 1998 – Kevin Spacey
    Kevin Spacey
    Kevin Spacey, CBE is an American actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and crooner. He grew up in California, and began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s, before being cast in supporting roles in film and television...

     for
    The Iceman Cometh
    The Iceman Cometh
    The Iceman Cometh is a play written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1939. First published in 1940 the play premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on 9 October 1946, directed by Eddie Dowling where it ran for 136 performances to close on 15 March 1947.-Characters:* Night Hawk-...

  • 1997 – Ian Holm
    Ian Holm
    Sir Ian Holm, CBE is an English actor known for his stage work and for many film roles. He received the 1967 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor for his performance as Lenny in The Homecoming and the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of King Lear...

     for
    King Lear
    King Lear
    King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...

  • 1996 – David Suchet
    David Suchet
    David Suchet, CBE, is an English actor, known for his work on British television. He is recognised for his RTS- and BPG award-winning performance as Augustus Melmotte in the 2001 British TV mini-drama The Way We Live Now, alongside Matthew Macfadyen and Paloma Baeza, and a 1991 British Academy...

     for
    Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
    Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
    Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee that opened on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theater on October 13, 1962. The original cast featured Uta Hagen as Martha, Arthur Hill as George, Melinda Dillon as Honey and George Grizzard as Nick. It was directed by Alan Schneider...

  • 1995 – Daniel Massey
    Daniel Massey (actor)
    Daniel Raymond Massey was an English actor and performer. He is possibly best known for his starring role in the British TV drama The Roads to Freedom, as Daniel, alongside Michael Bryant...

     for
    Taking Sides
    Taking Sides (play)
    Taking Sides is a 1995 play by British playwright Ronald Harwood, about the post-War U.S. denazification investigation of the German conductor and composer Wilhelm Furtwängler on charges of having served the Nazi regime. Harwood drew inter alia on a detailed diary kept by Furtwängler of his...

  • 1994 – Tom Courtenay
    Tom Courtenay
    Sir Thomas Daniel "Tom" Courtenay is an English actor who came to prominence in the early 1960s with a succession of films including The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner , Billy Liar , and Dr. Zhivago . Since the mid-1960s he has been known primarily for his work in the theatre...

     for
    Moscow Stations
  • 1993 – Ian Holm
    Ian Holm
    Sir Ian Holm, CBE is an English actor known for his stage work and for many film roles. He received the 1967 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor for his performance as Lenny in The Homecoming and the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of King Lear...

     for
    Moonlight
    Moonlight (play)
    Moonlight is a play written by Harold Pinter, which premiered at the Almeida Theatre, in London, in September 1993.-Setting:THREE MAIN PLAYING AREAS:rehashes his youth, loves, lusts, and betrayals with his wife, [Bel], while simultaneously his two sons [Fred and Jake] — clinical, conspiratorial,...

  • 1992 – Paul Eddington
    Paul Eddington
    Paul Eddington CBE was an English actor best known for his appearances in popular television sitcoms of the 1970s and 80s: The Good Life, Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.-Early life:...

     for
    No Man's Land
    No Man's Land (play)
    No Man's Land is a play by Harold Pinter written in 1974 and first produced and published in 1975. Its original production was at the Old Vic Theatre in London by the National Theatre on 23 April 1975, and it later transferred to Wyndhams Theatre, July 1975 - January 1976, the Lyttelton Theatre...

  • 1991 – Nigel Hawthorne
    Nigel Hawthorne
    Sir Nigel Barnard Hawthorne, CBE was an English actor, perhaps best remembered for his role as Sir Humphrey Appleby, the Permanent Secretary in the 1980s sitcom Yes Minister and the Cabinet Secretary in its sequel, Yes, Prime Minister. For this role he won four BAFTA Awards during the 1980s in the...

     for
    The Madness of George III
  • 1990 – Michael Gambon
    Michael Gambon
    Sir Michael John Gambon, CBE is an Irish actor who has worked in theatre, television and film. A highly respected theatre actor, Gambon is recognised for his roles as Philip Marlowe in the BBC television serial The Singing Detective, as Jules Maigret in the 1990s ITV serial Maigret, and as...

     for
    Man of the Moment
    Man of the Moment (play)
    Man of the Moment is a play by the British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It was premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough on 10 August 1988 and transferred to the Globe Theatre in the West End on 14 February 1990-Original West End cast:...

  • 1989 – Ian McKellen
    Ian McKellen
    Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH, CBE is an English actor. He has received a Tony Award, two Academy Award nominations, and five Emmy Award nominations. His work has spanned genres from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction...

     for
    Othello
    Othello
    The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...

  • 1988 – (tie) Alex Jennings
    Alex Jennings
    Alex Jennings is an English actor whose roles have included Charles, Prince of Wales in The Queen .-Early years:...

     for
    Too Clever by Half
  • 1988 – (tie) Tom Wilkinson
    Tom Wilkinson
    Thomas Geoffrey "Tom" Wilkinson, OBE is a British actor. He has twice been nominated for an Academy Award for his roles in In the Bedroom and Michael Clayton...

     for
    An Enemy of the People
    An Enemy of the People
    An Enemy of the People is an 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen wrote it in response to the public outcry against his play Ghosts, which at that time was considered scandalous...

  • 1987 – Brian Cox for The Taming of the Shrew
    The Taming of the Shrew
    The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1591.The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the Induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself...

    , Titus Andronicus
    Titus Andronicus
    Titus Andronicus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, and possibly George Peele, believed to have been written between 1588 and 1593. It is thought to be Shakespeare's first tragedy, and is often seen as his attempt to emulate the violent and bloody revenge plays of his contemporaries, which were...

    and Fashion
  • 1986 – (tie) Hugh Quarshie
    Hugh Quarshie
    - Early and Personal Life :Quarshie is of mixed Ghanaian, English and Dutch ancestry and was born in Accra, Ghana, to Emma Wilhelmina and Richard Quarshie, and emigrated with his family to the United Kingdom when he was aged three...

     for
    The Great White Hope
    The Great White Hope
    The Great White Hope is a 1967 play written by Howard Sackler, later adapted in 1970 for a film of the same name. The play was first produced by Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. and debuted on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on October 3, 1968 for a run of 546 performances, directed by Edwin Sherin...

  • 1986 – (tie) Bill Fraser
    Bill Fraser
    -External links:* *...

     for
    When We Are Married
    When We Are Married
    When We Are Married is a 1938 play by English dramatist, J. B. Priestley. It is the first play ever to be televised unedited from a theatre.-Productions:* 1938 World premiere, London, England* 16 November 1938 BBC live telecast...

  • 1985 – (tie) Anthony Hopkins
    Anthony Hopkins
    Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, KBE , best known as Anthony Hopkins, is a Welsh actor of film, stage and television...

      for
    Pravda
    Pravda (play)
    Pravda is a play by David Hare and Howard Brenton. It was first produced at the Royal National Theatre on 2 May 1985, directed by David Hare starring Anthony Hopkins in the role of Lambert Le Roux. It is a satire on the mid-1980s newspaper industry, in particular the press baron Rupert Murdoch...

  • 1985 – (tie) Gary Oldman
    Gary Oldman
    Gary Leonard Oldman is an English actor, voice actor, filmmaker and musician.A member of the 1980s Brit Pack, Oldman came to prominence via starring roles in British films Meantime , Sid and Nancy and Prick Up Your Ears , with his performance in the latter bringing him his first BAFTA Award...

     for
    The Pope's Wedding
  • 1984 – (tie) Brian Cox for Rat in the Skull and Strange Interlude
    Strange Interlude
    Strange Interlude is an experimental play by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. O'Neill finished the play in 1923, but it was not produced on Broadway until 1928, when it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Lynn Fontanne originated the central role of Nina Leeds on Broadway...

  • 1984 – (tie) Anthony Sher for Richard III
    Richard III (play)
    Richard III is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1591. It depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of Richard III of England. The play is grouped among the histories in the First Folio and is most often classified...

  • 1983 – Derek Jacobi
    Derek Jacobi
    Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE is an English actor and film director.A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in...

     for
    Cyrano de Bergerac
    Cyrano de Bergerac
    Hercule-Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac was a French dramatist and duelist. He is now best remembered for the works of fiction which have been woven, often very loosely, around his life story, most notably the 1897 play by Edmond Rostand...

    and Much Ado About Nothing
    Much Ado About Nothing
    Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....

  • 1982 – Bob Hoskins
    Bob Hoskins
    Robert William "Bob" Hoskins, Jr. is an English actor known for playing Cockney rough diamonds, psychopaths and gangsters, in films such as The Long Good Friday , and Mona Lisa , and lighter roles in family films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Hook .- Early life :Hoskins was born in Bury St...

     for
    Guys and Dolls
    Guys and Dolls
    Guys and Dolls is a musical with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. It is based on "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" and "Blood Pressure", two short stories by Damon Runyon, and also borrows characters and plot elements from other Runyon stories, most notably...


Best Actress

  • 2010 – Jenny Jules
    Jenny Jules
    Jenny Jules is an award-winning English actress of stage and screen. She started her acting career as a member of the youth theatre program at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, London...

     for
    Ruined
  • 2009 – Rachel Weisz
    Rachel Weisz
    Rachel Hannah Weisz born 7 March 1970)is an English-American film and theatre actress and former fashion model. She started her acting career at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she co-founded the theatrical group Cambridge Talking Tongues...

     for
    A Streetcar Named Desire
    A Streetcar Named Desire (play)
    A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1947 play written by American playwright Tennessee Williams for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948. The play opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. The Broadway production was...

  • 2008 – Margaret Tyzack
    Margaret Tyzack
    Margaret Maud Tyzack, CBE was a British actress.-Early life:Tyzack was born in Essex, England, the daughter of Doris and Thomas Edward Tyzack. She grew up in West Ham...

     for
    The Chalk Garden
    The Chalk Garden
    The Chalk Garden is a play by Enid Bagnold that premiered on Broadway in 1955. The play tells the story of Mrs. St Maugham and her granddaughter Laurel, a disturbed child under Miss Madrigal's care. The setting of the play was inspired by Bagnold's own garden at North End House in Rottingdean, near...

  • 2007 – Anne-Marie Duff
    Anne-Marie Duff
    Anne-Marie Duff is an English actress best known for playing Fiona Gallagher in Shameless, and Elizabeth I in The Virgin Queen.-Early life:...

     for
    Saint Joan
    Saint Joan (play)
    Saint Joan is a play by George Bernard Shaw, based on the life and trial of Joan of Arc. Published not long after the canonization of Joan of Arc by the Roman Catholic Church, the play dramatises what is known of her life based on the substantial records of her trial. Shaw studied the transcripts...

  • 2006 – Kathleen Turner
    Kathleen Turner
    Mary Kathleen Turner is an American actress. She came to fame during the 1980s, after roles in the Hollywood films Body Heat, Peggy Sue Got Married, Romancing the Stone, The War of the Roses, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Prizzi's Honor...

      for
    Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
    Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
    Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee that opened on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theater on October 13, 1962. The original cast featured Uta Hagen as Martha, Arthur Hill as George, Melinda Dillon as Honey and George Grizzard as Nick. It was directed by Alan Schneider...

  • 2005 – Eve Best
    Eve Best
    Eve Best is an English actress, best known for her roles as Dr. O'Hara in the Showtime television series Nurse Jackie, as Wallis Simpson in the 2010 film The King's Speech, and Dolley Madison in the 2011 American Experience television special about that First Lady.-Early life and education:Best...

     for
    Hedda Gabler
    Hedda Gabler
    Hedda Gabler is a play first published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play premiered in 1891 in Germany to negative reviews, but has subsequently gained recognition as a classic of realism, nineteenth century theatre, and world drama...

  • 2004 – Victoria Hamilton
    Victoria Hamilton
    Victoria Sharp is an English actress who performs under the stage name Victoria Hamilton.-Early life:Hamilton was born on 5 April 1971 in Wimbledon, London, England, and grew up in Godalming, Surrey. She trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.-Career:Hamilton is best known for her...

     for
    Suddenly Last Summer
  • 2003 – Eve Best
    Eve Best
    Eve Best is an English actress, best known for her roles as Dr. O'Hara in the Showtime television series Nurse Jackie, as Wallis Simpson in the 2010 film The King's Speech, and Dolley Madison in the 2011 American Experience television special about that First Lady.-Early life and education:Best...

     for
    Mourning Becomes Electra
    Mourning Becomes Electra
    Mourning Becomes Electra is a play cycle written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. The play premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre on 26 October 1931 where it ran for 150 performances before closing in March 1932...

  • 2002 – Clare Higgins
    Clare Higgins
    Mary Clare Higgins, a Democrat, was elected to her first term as Mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts in November 1999; she took office in January 2000. She was elected to a sixth two-yearterm in November 2009...

     for
    Vincent in Brixton
    Vincent in Brixton
    Vincent in Brixton is a 2003 play by Nicholas Wright. The play premiered at London's National Theatre. It transferred to the Playhouse Theatre and later to Broadway....

  • 2001 – Lindsay Duncan
    Lindsay Duncan
    Lindsay Vere Duncan, CBE is a Scottish stage, television and film actress. On stage she won two Olivier Awards and a Tony Award for her performance in Les Liaisons dangereuses and Private Lives , and she starred in several plays by Harold Pinter. Her most famous roles on television include:...

     for
    Mouth to Mouth and Private Lives
    Private Lives
    Private Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for...

  • 2000 – Victoria Hamilton
    Victoria Hamilton
    Victoria Sharp is an English actress who performs under the stage name Victoria Hamilton.-Early life:Hamilton was born on 5 April 1971 in Wimbledon, London, England, and grew up in Godalming, Surrey. She trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.-Career:Hamilton is best known for her...

     for
    As You Like It
    As You Like It
    As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility...

  • 1999 – Janie Dee
    Janie Dee
    Janie Dee is an English actress and singer.She is married to the actor Rupert Wickham.-Theatre:Dee is presently part of the Globe Theatre 2011 season playing The Countess of Roussillion in Shakespeare's "All's Well that Ends Well" and in October she goes to Nottingham Playhouse to play Amanda in ...

     for Comic Potential
    Comic Potential (play)
    Comic Potential by Alan Ayckbourn is a romantic sci-fi comedy. It is set in a TV studio in the foreseeable future, when low-cost androids have largely replaced actors.-Background:...

  • 1998 – Sinéad Cusack
    Sinéad Cusack
    Sinéad Moira Cusack is an Irish stage, television and film actress. She has received two Tony Award nominations: once for Best Leading Actress in Much Ado About Nothing , and again for Best Featured Actress in Rock 'n' Roll .-Background:...

     for Our Lady of Sligo
  • 1997 – Judi Dench
    Judi Dench
    Dame Judith Olivia "Judi" Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA is an English film, stage and television actress.Dench made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years she played in several of William Shakespeare's plays in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo...

     for Amy's View
    Amy's View
    Amy's View was written by British playwright David Hare, and originally premiered in London at the Royal National Theatre's Lyttelton Theatre on June 13, 1997. It was directed by Richard Eyre and starred Judi Dench, Ronald Pickup and Samantha Bond in the title role. It was then performed on...

  • 1996 – Janet McTeer
    Janet McTeer
    Janet McTeer, OBE is a British actress.-Life and career:McTeer was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom, the daughter of Jean and Alan McTeer...

     for A Doll's House
    A Doll's House
    A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premièred at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month....

  • 1995 – Claire Skinner
    Claire Skinner
    Claire L. Skinner is an English actress, who is well known in the United Kingdom for her television career.-Biography:Born and brought up in Hemel Hempstead, Skinner, the youngest daughter of a shopkeeper and an Irish-born secretary, was immensely shy as a child...

     for The Glass Menagerie
    The Glass Menagerie
    The Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. Williams worked on various drafts of the play prior to writing a version of it as a screenplay for MGM, to whom Williams was contracted...

  • 1994 – Clare Higgins
    Clare Higgins
    Mary Clare Higgins, a Democrat, was elected to her first term as Mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts in November 1999; she took office in January 2000. She was elected to a sixth two-yearterm in November 2009...

     for The Children's Hour
    The Children's Hour (play)
    The Children's Hour is a 1934 stage play written by Lillian Hellman. It is a drama set in an all-girls boarding school run by two women, Karen Wright and Martha Dobie. An angry student, Mary Tilford, runs away from the school and to avoid being sent back she tells her grandmother that the two...

    and Sweet Bird of Youth
    Sweet Bird of Youth
    Sweet Bird of Youth is a 1959 play by Tennessee Williams which tells the story of a gigolo and drifter, Chance Wayne, who returns to his home town as the accompaniment of a faded movie star, Princess Kosmonopolis , whom he hopes to use to help him break into the movies...

  • 1993 – Penelope Wilton
    Penelope Wilton
    Penelope Alice Wilton, OBE is an English actress.-Life and career:Penelope Alice Wilton was born in Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, to a former actress mother and a businessman father. She is a niece of actors Bill Travers and Linden Travers and a cousin of the actor Richard Morant...

     for The Deep Blue Sea
  • 1992 – Eileen Atkins
    Eileen Atkins
    Dame Eileen June Atkins, DBE is an English actress and occasional screenwriter.- Early life :Atkins was born in the Mothers' Hospital in Clapton, a Salvation Army women's hostel in East London...

     for The Night of the Iguana
    The Night of the Iguana
    The Night of the Iguana is a stageplay written by American author Tennessee Williams, based on his 1948 short story. The play premiered on Broadway in 1961. Two film adaptations have been made, including the Academy Award-winning 1964 film of the same name....

  • 1991 – Fiona Shaw
    Fiona Shaw
    Fiona Shaw, CBE is an Irish actress and theatre director. Although to international audiences she is probably most familiar for her minor role as Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter films, she is an accomplished classical actress...

     for Hedda Gabler
    Hedda Gabler
    Hedda Gabler is a play first published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play premiered in 1891 in Germany to negative reviews, but has subsequently gained recognition as a classic of realism, nineteenth century theatre, and world drama...

  • 1990 – Josette Simon
    Josette Simon
    Josette Patricia Simon OBE is a British actor of Antiguan descent. She trained for the stage at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.-Career:...

     for After the Fall
    After the Fall (play)
    After the Fall is a play by American dramatist Arthur Miller. The original performance opened in New York City on January 23, 1964, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Barbara Loden and Jason Robards Jr., with an early appearance by Faye Dunaway. Kazan also collaborated with Miller on the script...

  • 1989 – Fiona Shaw
    Fiona Shaw
    Fiona Shaw, CBE is an Irish actress and theatre director. Although to international audiences she is probably most familiar for her minor role as Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter films, she is an accomplished classical actress...

     for Electra
    Electra (Sophocles)
    Electra or Elektra is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes and the Oedipus at Colonus lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career.Set in the city of Argos a few years after the Trojan...

    and The Good Person of Sichuan
  • 1988 – Pauline Collins
    Pauline Collins
    Pauline Collins, OBE is an English actress of the stage, television, and film. She first came to prominence portraying Sarah Moffat in Upstairs, Downstairs and its spin-off Thomas & Sarah during the 1970s. She later drew acclaim for playing the title role in the play Shirley Valentine for which...

     for Shirley Valentine
    Shirley Valentine
    Shirley Valentine is a one-character play by Willy Russell. Taking the form of a monologue by a middle-aged, working class Liverpool housewife, it focuses on her life before and after a transforming holiday abroad.-Plot:...

  • 1987 – Judi Dench
    Judi Dench
    Dame Judith Olivia "Judi" Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA is an English film, stage and television actress.Dench made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years she played in several of William Shakespeare's plays in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo...

     for Antony and Cleopatra
    Antony and Cleopatra
    Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607. It was first printed in the First Folio of 1623. The plot is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony...

  • 1986 – Joan Plowright
    Joan Plowright
    Joan Ann Plowright, Baroness Olivier, DBE , better known as Dame Joan Plowright, is an English actress, whose career has spanned over sixty years. Throughout her career she has won two Golden Globe Awards and a Tony Award and has been nominated for an Academy Award, an Emmy, and two BAFTA Awards...

     for The House of Bernarda Alba
  • 1985 – Vanessa Redgrave
    Vanessa Redgrave
    Vanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...

     for The Seagull
    The Seagull
    The Seagull is the first of what are generally considered to be the four major plays by the Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov. The Seagull was written in 1895 and first produced in 1896...

  • 1984 – Glenda Jackson
    Glenda Jackson
    Glenda May Jackson, CBE is a British Labour Party politician and former actress. She has been a Member of Parliament since 1992, and currently represents Hampstead and Kilburn. She previously served as MP for Hampstead and Highgate...

     for Strange Interlude
    Strange Interlude
    Strange Interlude is an experimental play by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. O'Neill finished the play in 1923, but it was not produced on Broadway until 1928, when it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Lynn Fontanne originated the central role of Nina Leeds on Broadway...

  • 1983 – Juliet Stevenson
    Juliet Stevenson
    Juliet Anne Virginia Stevenson, CBE is an English actor of stage and screen.- Early life :Stevenson was born in Kelvedon, Essex, England, the daughter of Virginia Ruth , a teacher, and Michael Guy Stevenson, an army officer. Stevenson's father was in the army and was posted to a new place every...

     for Measure for Measure
    Measure for Measure
    Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604. It was classified as comedy, but its mood defies those expectations. As a result and for a variety of reasons, some critics have labelled it as one of Shakespeare's problem plays...

  • 1982 – Judi Dench
    Judi Dench
    Dame Judith Olivia "Judi" Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA is an English film, stage and television actress.Dench made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years she played in several of William Shakespeare's plays in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo...

     for A Kind of Alaska
    A Kind of Alaska
    A Kind of Alaska is a one-act play written in 1982 by Harold Pinter , the 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature.-Summary:A middle-aged woman named Deborah, who has been in a comatose state for thirty years as a result of contracting sleeping sickness, awakes with a mind still that of a sixteen-year-old...

    and The Importance of Being Earnest
    The Importance of Being Earnest
    The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at St. James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae in order to escape burdensome social obligations...


The John and Wendy Trewin Award for Best Shakespearean Performance

  • 2010 – Derek Jacobi
    Derek Jacobi
    Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE is an English actor and film director.A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in...

     for King Lear
  • 2009 – Jude Law
    Jude Law
    David Jude Heyworth Law , known professionally as Jude Law, is an English actor, film producer and director.He began acting with the National Youth Music Theatre in 1987, and had his first television role in 1989...

     for Hamlet
    Hamlet
    The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

  • 2008 – David Tennant
    David Tennant
    David Tennant is a Scottish actor. In addition to his work in theatre, including a widely praised Hamlet, Tennant is best known for his role as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who, along with the title role in the 2005 TV serial Casanova and as Barty Crouch, Jr...

     for Hamlet
    Hamlet
    The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

    and Derek Jacobi
    Derek Jacobi
    Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE is an English actor and film director.A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in...

     for Malvolio in Twelfth Night
  • 2007 – Chiwetel Ejiofor
    Chiwetel Ejiofor
    Chiwetelu Umeadi "Chiwetel" Ejiofor, OBE is an English actor of stage and screen. He has received numerous acting awards and award nominations, including the 2006 BAFTA Awards Rising Star, three Golden Globe Awards' nominations, and the 2008 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his...

     for Othello
    Othello
    The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...

    ; and Patrick Stewart
    Patrick Stewart
    Sir Patrick Hewes Stewart, OBE is an English film, television and stage actor, who has had a distinguished career in theatre and television for around half a century...

     for Macbeth
    Macbeth
    The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...

  • 2006 – Tamsin Greig
    Tamsin Greig
    Tamsin Greig is an English actress principally known for two Channel 4 television comedy parts: Fran Katzenjammer in Black Books and Dr. Caroline Todd in Green Wing...

     for Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing
    Much Ado About Nothing
    Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....

  • 2005 – Kevin Spacey
    Kevin Spacey
    Kevin Spacey, CBE is an American actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and crooner. He grew up in California, and began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s, before being cast in supporting roles in film and television...

     for Richard II
    Richard II (play)
    King Richard the Second is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to be written in approximately 1595. It is based on the life of King Richard II of England and is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by some scholars as the Henriad, followed by three plays concerning Richard's...

  • 2004 – Paul Rhys
    Paul Rhys
    Paul Rhys is a British television, film and theatre actor.Rhys was born in Wales and studied at RADA, leaving with the Bancroft Gold Medal in 1987. While there, he obtained his first major screen role, in Absolute Beginners . Since then he has seldom been off the stage and screen...

     for Measure for Measure
    Measure for Measure
    Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604. It was classified as comedy, but its mood defies those expectations. As a result and for a variety of reasons, some critics have labelled it as one of Shakespeare's problem plays...

  • 2003 – Greg Hicks
    Greg Hicks
    Greg Hicks is an English actor. He completed theatrical training at Rose Bruford College and has been a member of The Royal Shakespeare Company since 1976...

     for Coriolanus
    Coriolanus (play)
    Coriolanus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1605 and 1608. The play is based on the life of the legendary Roman leader, Gaius Marcius Coriolanus.-Characters:*Caius Martius, later surnamed Coriolanus...

  • 2002 – Mark Rylance
    Mark Rylance
    Mark Rylance is an English actor, theatre director and playwright.As an actor, Rylance found success on stage and screen. For his work in theatre he has won Olivier and Tony Awards among others, and a BAFTA TV Award...

     for Twelfth Night
  • 2001 – Samuel West
    Samuel West
    Samuel Alexander Joseph West is an English actor and theatre director. He is perhaps best known for his role in Howards End and his work on stage. He also starred in the award-winning play ENRON...

     for Hamlet
    Hamlet
    The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

  • 2000 – Simon Russell Beale
    Simon Russell Beale
    Simon Russell Beale, CBE is an English actor. He has been described by The Independent as "the greatest stage actor of his generation."-Early years:...

     for Hamlet
    Hamlet
    The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...


Best Director

  • 2010 – Michael Grandage
    Michael Grandage
    Michael Grandage CBE is a British theatre director and producer, and current Artistic Director at the Donmar Warehouse, London. Grandage won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for Red.-Early years:...

     for King Lear (Donmar Warehouse), jointly with Thea Sharrock
    Thea Sharrock
    Thea Sharrock is an award-winning English theatre director. In 2001, when at age 24 she became artistic director of London's Southwark Playhouse, she was the youngest artistic director in British theatre....

     for After the Dance
    After the Dance (play)
    After the Dance is a play by Terence Rattigan which premièred at the St James's Theatre, London, on 21 June 1939. It was not one of Rattigan's more successful plays, closing after only sixty performances, a failure that led to its exclusion from his first volume of Collected Plays...

    (National Theatre)
  • 2009 – Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold is an English theatre director. He is the artistic director of Headlong Theatre and from 2010 he will be an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.- Early years :...

     for Enron
  • 2008 – Michael Grandage
    Michael Grandage
    Michael Grandage CBE is a British theatre director and producer, and current Artistic Director at the Donmar Warehouse, London. Grandage won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for Red.-Early years:...

     for Ivanov and The Chalk Garden
    The Chalk Garden
    The Chalk Garden is a play by Enid Bagnold that premiered on Broadway in 1955. The play tells the story of Mrs. St Maugham and her granddaughter Laurel, a disturbed child under Miss Madrigal's care. The setting of the play was inspired by Bagnold's own garden at North End House in Rottingdean, near...

  • 2007 – Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold
    Rupert Goold is an English theatre director. He is the artistic director of Headlong Theatre and from 2010 he will be an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company.- Early years :...

     for Macbeth (Minerva Theatre
    Minerva Theatre, Chichester
    The Minerva Theatre is a studio theatre seating at full capacity 283. It is run as part of the adjacent Chichester Festival Theatre, located in Chichester, England, and was opened in 1989...

     Chichester
    Chichester
    Chichester is a cathedral city in West Sussex, within the historic County of Sussex, South-East England. It has a long history as a settlement; its Roman past and its subsequent importance in Anglo-Saxon times are only its beginnings...

     and Gielgud Theatre
    Gielgud Theatre
    The Gielgud Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster, London, at the corner of Rupert Street. The house currently has 889 seats on three levels.-History:...

     London)
  • 2006 – John Tiffany for Black Watch
    Black Watch (play)
    Black Watch is a play written by Gregory Burke and directed by John Tiffany for the National Theatre of Scotland. Based on interviews with former soldiers, it portrays soldiers in the Black Watch regiment of the British Army serving on Operation TELIC in Iraq during 2004, prior to the amalgamation...

    (National Theatre of Scotland
    National Theatre of Scotland
    The National Theatre of Scotland is a theatre company established in February 2006. The company performs in a wide range of venues including theatres, halls and found spaces across Scotland....

     at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe)
  • 2005 – Michael Grandage
    Michael Grandage
    Michael Grandage CBE is a British theatre director and producer, and current Artistic Director at the Donmar Warehouse, London. Grandage won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for Red.-Early years:...

     for The Wild Duck
    The Wild Duck
    The Wild Duck is an 1884 play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.-Plot:The first act opens with a dinner party hosted by Håkon Werle, a wealthy merchant and industrialist. The gathering is attended by his son, Gregers Werle, who has just returned to his father's home following a self-imposed...

  • 2004 – Rufus Norris
    Rufus Norris
    Rufus Norris is an award-winning British theatre director who trained as an actor at RADA before turning to directing.In 2001 he won the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Newcomer for his production of Afore Night Came at the Young Vic....

     for Festen
    The Celebration (Play)
    Festen is a British stage adaptation of the Danish film of the same name . The adaptation is by English playwright David Eldridge...

  • 2003 – Howard Davies
    Howard Davies (Theatre Director)
    Stephen Howard Davies CBE is a British theatre and television director.Davies, the son of a miner, was born in Durham, England and studied at Durham University and Bristol University, where he developed an appreciation for the works of Bertolt Brecht.In the early 1970s, Davies worked extensively...

     for Mourning Becomes Electra
    Mourning Becomes Electra
    Mourning Becomes Electra is a play cycle written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. The play premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre on 26 October 1931 where it ran for 150 performances before closing in March 1932...

  • 2002 – Sam Mendes
    Sam Mendes
    Samuel Alexander "Sam" Mendes, CBE is an English stage and film director. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning work on his debut film American Beauty and his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret , Oliver! , Company and Gypsy . He's currently working on the 23rd James Bond...

     for Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya
    Uncle Vanya
    Uncle Vanya is a play by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It was first published in 1897 and received its Moscow première in 1899 in a production by the Moscow Art Theatre, under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski....

  • 2001 – Robert Lepage
    Robert Lepage
    Robert Lepage, is a playwright, actor, film director, and stage director from Québec City, Québec, and is one of Canada's most honoured theatre artists.- Life and work :...

     for The Far Side of the Moon
  • 2000 – Michael Grandage
    Michael Grandage
    Michael Grandage CBE is a British theatre director and producer, and current Artistic Director at the Donmar Warehouse, London. Grandage won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for Red.-Early years:...

     for As You Like It
    As You Like It
    As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility...

    , Passion Play
    Passion play
    A Passion play is a dramatic presentation depicting the Passion of Jesus Christ: his trial, suffering and death. It is a traditional part of Lent in several Christian denominations, particularly in Catholic tradition....

    and Merrily We Roll Along
    Merrily We Roll Along (musical)
    Merrily We Roll Along is a musical with a book by George Furth and lyrics and music by Stephen Sondheim. It is based on the 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart....

  • 1999 – Trevor Nunn
    Trevor Nunn
    Sir Trevor Robert Nunn, CBE is an English theatre, film and television director. Nunn has been the Artistic Director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and, currently, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. He has directed musicals and dramas for the stage, as well as opera...

     for The Merchant of Venice
    The Merchant of Venice
    The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...

    and Summerfolk
    Summerfolk (play)
    Summerfolk is a play written in 1903 by Maxim Gorky. Based in part on the life of the writer Anton Chekhov, it takes place in 1904—the same year that Chekhov died...

  • 1998 – Howard Davies
    Howard Davies (Theatre Director)
    Stephen Howard Davies CBE is a British theatre and television director.Davies, the son of a miner, was born in Durham, England and studied at Durham University and Bristol University, where he developed an appreciation for the works of Bertolt Brecht.In the early 1970s, Davies worked extensively...

     for The Iceman Cometh
    The Iceman Cometh
    The Iceman Cometh is a play written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1939. First published in 1940 the play premiered on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on 9 October 1946, directed by Eddie Dowling where it ran for 136 performances to close on 15 March 1947.-Characters:* Night Hawk-...

    and Flight
    Flight (play)
    Flight is a play by Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov. It is set during the end of the Russian Civil War, when the remnants of the White Army are desperately resisting the Red Army on the Crimean isthmus...

  • 1997 – Richard Eyre
    Richard Eyre
    Sir Richard Charles Hastings Eyre CBE is an English director of film, theatre, television, and opera.-Biography:Eyre was educated at Sherborne School, an independent school for boys in the market town of Sherborne in north-west Dorset in south-west England, followed by Peterhouse at the University...

     for King Lear
    King Lear
    King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...

    and The Invention of Love
    The Invention of Love
    The Invention of Love is a 1997 play by Tom Stoppard portraying the life of poet A.E. Housman, focusing specifically on his personal life and love for a college classmate. The play is written from the viewpoint of Housman dealing with his memories towards the end of his life and contains many...

  • 1996 – Richard Eyre
    Richard Eyre
    Sir Richard Charles Hastings Eyre CBE is an English director of film, theatre, television, and opera.-Biography:Eyre was educated at Sherborne School, an independent school for boys in the market town of Sherborne in north-west Dorset in south-west England, followed by Peterhouse at the University...

     for John Gabriel Borkman
    John Gabriel Borkman
    John Gabriel Borkman is the penultimate composition of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, written in 1896.-Plot:The Borkman family fortunes have been brought low by the imprisonment of John Gabriel who used his position as a bank manager to illegally speculate with his investors' money...

    and his revived Guys and Dolls
  • 1995 – Sam Mendes
    Sam Mendes
    Samuel Alexander "Sam" Mendes, CBE is an English stage and film director. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning work on his debut film American Beauty and his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret , Oliver! , Company and Gypsy . He's currently working on the 23rd James Bond...

     for The Glass Menagerie
    The Glass Menagerie
    The Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. Williams worked on various drafts of the play prior to writing a version of it as a screenplay for MGM, to whom Williams was contracted...

  • 1994 – Sean Mathias
    Sean Mathias
    Sean Gerard Mathias is a British theatre director, film director, writer and actor.Mathias was born in Swansea, south Wales. He is known for directing the film, Bent, and for directing highly acclaimed theatre productions in London, New York, Cape Town, Los Angeles and Sydney...

     for Design for Living
    Design for Living
    Design for Living is a comedy play written by Noël Coward in 1932. It concerns a trio of artistic characters, Gilda, Otto and Leo, and their complicated three-way relationship. Originally written to star Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt and Coward, it was premiered on Broadway, partly because its risqué...

    and Les Parents terribles
    Les parents terribles
    Les Parents terribles is a 1938 French play written by Jean Cocteau. Despite initial problems with censorship, it was revived on the French stage several times after its original production, and in 1948 a film adaptation directed by Cocteau himself was released...

  • 1993 – Terry Hands
    Terry Hands
    Terence David Hands is an English theatre director. He ran the Royal Shakespeare Company for 20 years during one of its most successful periods.-Early years:...

     for Tamburlaine the Great
    Tamburlaine (play)
    Tamburlaine the Great is the name of a play in two parts by Christopher Marlowe. It is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor, Timur 'the lame'...

  • 1992 – Stephen Daldry
    Stephen Daldry
    Stephen David Daldry, CBE is an English theatre and film director and producer, as well as a three-time Academy Award nominated and Tony Award winning director.-Early years:...

     for An Inspector Calls
    An Inspector Calls
    An Inspector Calls is a play written by English dramatist J. B. Priestley, first performed in 1945 in the Soviet Union and 1946 in the UK. It is considered to be one of Priestley's best known works for the stage and one of the classics of mid-20th century English theatre...

  • 1991 – Trevor Nunn
    Trevor Nunn
    Sir Trevor Robert Nunn, CBE is an English theatre, film and television director. Nunn has been the Artistic Director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and, currently, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. He has directed musicals and dramas for the stage, as well as opera...

     for Timon of Athens
    Timon of Athens
    The Life of Timon of Athens is a play by William Shakespeare about the fortunes of an Athenian named Timon , generally regarded as one of his most obscure and difficult works...

  • 1990 – Sir Peter Hall for The Wild Duck
    The Wild Duck
    The Wild Duck is an 1884 play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.-Plot:The first act opens with a dinner party hosted by Håkon Werle, a wealthy merchant and industrialist. The gathering is attended by his son, Gregers Werle, who has just returned to his father's home following a self-imposed...

    ; Robert Lepage
    Robert Lepage
    Robert Lepage, is a playwright, actor, film director, and stage director from Québec City, Québec, and is one of Canada's most honoured theatre artists.- Life and work :...

     for Tectonic Plates
  • 1989 – Nicholas Hytner
    Nicholas Hytner
    Sir Nicholas Robert Hytner is an English film and theatre producer and director. He has been the artistic director of London's National Theatre since 2003.-Biography:...

     for Ghetto
    Ghetto (play)
    Ghetto is a play by Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol about the experiences of the Jews of the Vilna Ghetto during Nazi occupation in World War II. The play focuses on the Jewish theatre in the ghetto, incorporating live music and including as characters historical figures such as Jacob Gens, the...

    and Miss Saigon
    Miss Saigon
    Miss Saigon is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, with lyrics by Boublil and Richard Maltby, Jr.. It is based on Giacomo Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly, and similarly tells the tragic tale of a doomed romance involving an Asian woman abandoned by her American lover...

  • 1988 – Peter Brook
    Peter Brook
    Peter Stephen Paul Brook CH, CBE is an English theatre and film director and innovator, who has been based in France since the early 1970s.-Life:...

     for The Mahabharata (1989 film)
    The Mahabharata (1989 film)
    The Mahabharata is a 1989 film version of the Indian epic, Mahabharata, directed by Peter Brook. Brook's original 1985 stage play was 9 hours long, and toured around the world for four years. In 1989, it was reduced to under 6 hours for television . Later it was also reduced to about 3 hours for...

  • 1987 – Declan Donnellan
    Declan Donnellan
    Declan Donnellan is a British theatre director and writer. He is co-founder of Cheek by Jowl theatre company. In 1992 he received an honoris causa degree from the University of Warwick and in 2004 he was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his work in France...

     for Twelfth Night
  • 1986 – Mike Alfreds for The Cherry Orchard
    The Cherry Orchard
    The Cherry Orchard is Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's last play. It premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Constantin Stanislavski. Chekhov intended this play as a comedy and it does contain some elements of farce; however, Stanislavski insisted on...

  • 1985 – Bill Bryden
    Bill Bryden
    William Campbell Rough Bryden CBE is a British stage- and film director and screenwriter.-Biography:...

     for The Mysteries
    The Mysteries
    The Mysteries is a version of the medieval English mystery plays presented at London's National Theatre in 1977. The cycle of three plays tells the story of the Bible from the creation to the last judgement....

  • 1984 – Peter Gill
    Peter Gill (playwright)
    Peter Gill, theatre director, playwright and former actor, was born in Cardiff, Wales, on 7 September 1939, son of George John Gill and his wife Margaret Mary .He was educated at St Illtyd's College, Cardiff.-Career:...

     for Venice Preserved and Fool for Love
    Fool for Love (play)
    Fool for Love is a play written by American playwright/actor Sam Shepard.-Plot:The "fools" in the play are battling lovers at a Mojave Desert motel. May is hiding out at said motel when an old childhood friend and old flame, Eddie. Eddie tries to convince May to come back home with him and live in...

  • 1983 – (classical) Terry Hands
    Terry Hands
    Terence David Hands is an English theatre director. He ran the Royal Shakespeare Company for 20 years during one of its most successful periods.-Early years:...

     for Cyrano de Bergerac
    Cyrano de Bergerac
    Hercule-Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac was a French dramatist and duelist. He is now best remembered for the works of fiction which have been woven, often very loosely, around his life story, most notably the 1897 play by Edmond Rostand...

  • 1983 – (modern) Giles Havergal
    Giles Havergal
    Giles Pollock Havergal CBE is a Scottish theatre director, actor, and playwright. He was artistic director of Glasgow's Citizens Theatre from 1969 until he stepped down in 2003, one of the triumvirate of directors at the theatre, alongside Philip Prowse and Robert David MacDonald.-Early...

     for Men Should Weep
    Men Should Weep
    Men Should Weep is a play by Ena Lamont Stewart, written in 1947. It is set in Glasgow during the 1930s depression with all the action taking place in the household of the Morrison family...

  • 1982 – James Roose-Evans
    James Roose-Evans
    James Roose-Evans is a British theatre director, script-writer, priest and writer on experimental theatre, gesture, ritual and meditation. In 1959 he founded the Hampstead Theatre Club, in London; and in 1974 the Bleddfa Centre for creativity and spirituality, in Powys.-Biography:James...

     for 84 Charing Cross Road
    84 Charing Cross Road
    84, Charing Cross Road is a 1970 book by Helene Hanff, later made into a stage play, television play and film, about the twenty-year correspondence between her and Frank Doel, chief buyer of Marks & Co, antiquarian booksellers located at the eponymous address in London, England.Hanff, in search of...


The Peter Hepple Award for Best Musical

  • 2010 – Matilda
    Matilda (musical)
    Matilda is a musical written by Dennis Kelly with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin. It is based on the children's novel of the same name by Roald Dahl. The musical was performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company starting in December 2010 and running through January 2011...

    (Courtyard Theatre, Stratford upon Avon)
  • 2009 – Spring Awakening
  • 2008 – La Cage Aux Folles
  • 2007 – Hairspray
    Hairspray (musical)
    Hairspray is a musical with music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Shaiman and a book by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan, based on the 1988 John Waters film Hairspray. The songs include 1960s-style dance music and "downtown" rhythm and blues...

  • 2006 – Caroline, or Change
    Caroline, or Change
    Caroline, or Change is a through-composed musical with book and lyrics by Tony Kushner and score by Jeanine Tesori that combines spirituals, blues, Motown, classical music, and Jewish klezmer and folk music....

  • 2005 – Billy Elliot the Musical
    Billy Elliot the Musical
    Billy Elliot the Musical is a musical based on the 2000 film Billy Elliot. The music is by Sir Elton John, and book and lyrics are by Lee Hall, who wrote the film's screenplay. The plot revolves around motherless Billy, who trades boxing gloves for ballet shoes...

  • 2004 – The Producers
    The Producers (musical)
    The Producers is a musical adapted by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan from Brooks' 1968 film of the same name, with lyrics written by Brooks and music composed by Brooks and arranged by Glen Kelly and Doug Besterman. As in the film, the story concerns two theatrical producers who scheme to get rich...

  • 2003 – Jerry Springer – The Opera
  • 2002 – Anything Goes
    Anything Goes
    Anything Goes is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The original book was a collaborative effort by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, heavily revised by the team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. The story concerns madcap antics aboard an ocean liner bound from New York to London...

    (a revival)
  • 2001 – Kiss Me, Kate
    Kiss Me, Kate
    Kiss Me, Kate is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. It is structured as a play within a play, where the interior play is a musical version of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The original production starred Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison, Lisa Kirk and Harold Lang.Kiss...

    (a revival)
  • 2000 – The Beautiful Game
    The Beautiful Game (musical)
    The Beautiful Game is a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton about a group of teenagers growing up amid religious intolerance in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1969....

  • 1999 – Spend Spend Spend
    Spend Spend Spend
    Spend Spend Spend is a musical with a book and lyrics by Steve Brown and Justin Greene and music by Brown.In 1961, Yorkshire housewife Viv Nicholson won £152,319 in the football pools. When a reporter asked her what she planned to do with her new fortune, she replied, "I'm going to spend, spend,...

  • 1998 – Oklahoma!
    Oklahoma!
    Oklahoma! is the first musical written by composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in Oklahoma Territory outside the town of Claremore in 1906, it tells the story of cowboy Curly McLain and his romance...

  • 1997 – Chicago
    Chicago (musical)
    Chicago is a musical set in Prohibition-era Chicago. The music is by John Kander with lyrics by Fred Ebb and a book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the "celebrity criminal"...

  • 1996 – Guys and Dolls
  • 1995 – Company
    Company (musical)
    Company is a musical with a book by George Furth and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The original production was nominated for a record-setting fourteen Tony Awards and won six....

  • 1994 – She Loves Me
    She Loves Me
    She Loves Me is a musical with a book by Joe Masteroff, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and music by Jerry Bock.The musical is the fifth adaptation of the play Parfumerie by Hungarian playwright Miklos Laszlo, following the 1940 James Stewart-Margaret Sullavan film The Shop around the Corner and the...

  • 1993 – City of Angels
    City of Angels (musical)
    City of Angels is a musical comedy with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by David Zippel, and book by Larry Gelbart. The musical weaves together two plots, the "real" world of a writer trying to turn his book into a screenplay, and the "reel" world of the fictional film.-Productions:City of Angels...

  • 1992 – Assassins
    Assassins (musical)
    Assassins is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by John Weidman, based on an idea by Charles Gilbert, Jr. It uses the premise of a murderous carnival game to produce a revue-style portrayal of men and women who attempted to assassinate Presidents of the United States...

  • 1991 – Carmen Jones
    Carmen Jones
    Carmen Jones is a 1943 Broadway musical starring Muriel Smith in the title role, later made into a 1954 musical film; the play also ran for a season in 1991 at London's Old Vic and most recently in London's Royal Festival Hall in the Southbank Centre in 2007. It is an updating of the Georges Bizet...

  • 1990 – Into the Woods
    Into the Woods
    Into the Woods is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. It debuted in San Diego at the Old Globe Theatre in 1986, and premiered on Broadway in 1987. Bernadette Peters' performance as the Witch and Joanna Gleason's portrayal of the Baker's Wife brought acclaim...

  • 1989 – Miss Saigon
    Miss Saigon
    Miss Saigon is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, with lyrics by Boublil and Richard Maltby, Jr.. It is based on Giacomo Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly, and similarly tells the tragic tale of a doomed romance involving an Asian woman abandoned by her American lover...

  • 1988 – South Pacific
    South Pacific (musical)
    South Pacific is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The story draws from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific, weaving together characters and elements from several of its...

  • 1987 – Follies
    Follies
    Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman. The story concerns a reunion in a crumbling Broadway theatre, scheduled for demolition, of the past performers of the "Weismann's Follies," a musical revue , that played in that theatre between the World Wars...

  • 1986 – Chess
    Chess (musical)
    Chess is a musical with music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, formerly of ABBA, and with lyrics by Tim Rice. The story involves a romantic triangle between two top players, an American and a Russian, in a world chess championship, and a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other;...

  • 1985 – Me and My Girl
    Me and My Girl
    Me and My Girl is a musical with book and lyrics by Douglas Furber and L. Arthur Rose and music by Noel Gay. It takes place in the late 1930s in Hampshire, Mayfair, and Lambeth....

  • 1984 – On Your Toes
    On Your Toes
    On Your Toes is a musical with a book by Richard Rodgers, George Abbott, and Lorenz Hart, music by Rodgers, and lyrics by Hart. It was adapted into a film in 1939....

  • 1983 – Blood Brothers
  • 1982 – Guys and Dolls
    Guys and Dolls
    Guys and Dolls is a musical with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. It is based on "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" and "Blood Pressure", two short stories by Damon Runyon, and also borrows characters and plot elements from other Runyon stories, most notably...


Most Promising Playwright

  • 2010 – Anya Reiss
    Anya Reiss
    Anya Reiss is an award-winning British playwright who has also voiced ambitions to become an actress. She is the youngest playwright ever to have had a play staged in London....

     for Spur of the Moment
  • 2009 – Alia Bano
    Alia Bano
    Alia Bano is a British playwright of Pashtun origin. A graduate of Queen Mary, University of London, she currently works as a schoolteacher in London. Bano is a product of the Royal Court Theatre's programme for young playwrights, and her debut play Shades was staged at the Court in early 2009. The...

     for Shades
  • 2008 – Alexi Kaye Campbell
    Alexi Kaye Campbell
    - Biography :Alexi Kaye Campbell was born Alexi Komondouros in Athens, Greece to a Greek father and British mother. He was brought up in Athens. After graduating from Boston University with a degree in English and American Literature, Kaye Campbell went on to study acting at The Webber Douglas...

     for The Pride
  • 2007 – Polly Stenham
    Polly Stenham
    Polly Stenham is an award-winning English playwright best known for her play That Face, which she wrote when she was only 19 years old.-Background:...

     for That Face (Royal Court
    Royal Court Theatre
    The Royal Court Theatre is a non-commercial theatre on Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is noted for its contributions to modern theatre...

    )
  • 2006 – Nina Raine
    Nina Raine
    Nina Raine is an English theatre director and playwright, and the only daughter of the poet Craig Raine.She graduated from Christ Church, Oxford in 1998 with a First in English Literature.-Career:...

     for Rabbit
  • 2005 – Laura Wade
    Laura Wade
    Laura Wade is a British playwright. Wade grew up in Sheffield, where her father worked for a computer company....

     for Breathing Corpses and Colder Than Here
  • 2004 – Rebecca Lenkiewicz
    Rebecca Lenkiewicz
    Rebecca Lenkiewicz is a British playwright. She attended Plymouth High School for Girls, then progressed to a BA in Film and English at the University of Kent from 1985 to 1989 and then to a BA Acting Course at the Central School of Speech and Drama from 1996 to 1999.-Career:As a writer, her plays...

     for The Night Season
  • 2003 – Lucy Prebble
    Lucy Prebble
    Lucy Prebble is a British playwright. She is the author of the plays The Sugar Syndrome and ENRON and the television series Secret Diary of a Call Girl.-Biography:...

     for The Sugar Syndrome
    The Sugar Syndrome
    The Sugar Syndrome is a play written by British writer Lucy Prebble. It has won several awards and as of 2009 has been sold in seven languages.-Synopsis:...

  • 2002 – Charlotte Eilenberg for The Lucky Ones
  • 2001 – Gregory Burke
    Gregory Burke
    Gregory Burke is a Scottish playwright from Rosyth, Fife, Scotland.-Life:His family moved to Gibraltar in 1979 and returned to Dunfermline in 1984. He attended St John's Primary in Rosyth, St Christopher's Middle School in Gibraltar, Bayside Comprehensive, Gibraltar and St Columba's High School,...

     for Gagarin Way
    Gagarin Way
    Gagarin Way is a play by Scottish playwright Gregory Burke, named after a street in the West Fife village of Lumphinnans, on the edge of Cowdenbeath. The play documents the disappearance of socialism from an area where political radicalism was once a defining characteristic of the population...

  • 2000 – Joanna Laurens
    Joanna Laurens
    Joanna Laurens is an English playwright.Although born in Bristol, Laurens grew up in Jersey. She studied French horn at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama before leaving the course to read English at Queen's University of Belfast....

     for The Three Birds
  • 1999 – Charlotte Jones
    Charlotte Jones (writer)
    Charlotte Jones is a British actress and playwright.Her first play Airswimming debuted in 1997 at the Battersea Arts Centre in London. Her other plays include In Flame, The Dark, The Lightning Play, and Humble Boy...

     for Martha, Josie and the Chinese Elvis
  • 1998 – Rebecca Prichard
    Rebecca Prichard
    Rebecca Prichard is English author and playwright, and one of the major contributors to the In-yer-face theatre movement.-Biography:...

     for Yard Gal
  • 1997 – Conor McPherson
    Conor McPherson
    Conor McPherson is an Irish playwright and director.-Life and career:McPherson was born in Dublin, . He was educated at University College Dublin, McPherson began writing his first plays there as a member of UCD Dramsoc, the college's dramatic society, and went on to found Fly By Night Theatre...

     for The Weir
    The Weir
    The Weir is a play written by Conor McPherson in 1997. It was first produced at The Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London, England, on 4 July 1997. It first appeared on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre on 1 April 1999. It has since been performed in Toronto, Dublin, Belfast, Boston,...

  • 1996 – Martin McDonagh
    Martin McDonagh
    Martin McDonagh is an Irish-British playwright, filmmaker, and screenwriter. Although he has lived in London his entire life, he is considered one of the most important living Irish playwrights.-Life:...

     for The Beauty Queen of Leenane
    The Beauty Queen of Leenane
    The Beauty Queen of Leenane is a 1996 black comedy by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh which was premiered by the Druid Theatre Company in Galway, Ireland...

  • 1995 – Jez Butterworth
    Jez Butterworth
    Jeremy “Jez” Butterworth is an English dramatist and film director.-Life and career:Butterworth was born in London, England, and attended Verulam Comprehensive School, St Albans and St John's College, Cambridge...

     for Mojo
    Mojo (play)
    Mojo is a 1995 play written by English playwright Jez Butterworth that premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London, directed by Ian Rickson....

  • 1994 – Kevin Elyot
    Kevin Elyot
    Kevin Elyot is a British playwright and screenwriter. His most notable works include the play My Night with Reg and the film Clapham Junction.-Sources:*-External links:...

     for My Night With Reg
    My Night with Reg
    My Night with Reg is a play by British playwright Kevin Elyot which was produced in 1994 by the Royal Court Theatre, London, directed by Roger Michell...

  • 1993 – Simon Donald  for Theatre of Stuff
  • 1992 – Philip Ridley
    Philip Ridley
    Philip Ridley is a British artist working with various media.- Biography :Ridley was born in Bethnal Green, in the East End of London, where he still lives and works. He studied painting at St. Martin’s School of Art and his work has been exhibited throughout Europe and Japan...

     for The Fastest Clock in the Universe
  • 1991 – Rona Munro
    Rona Munro
    Rona Munro is a Scottish writer. She has written plays for theatre, radio, and television; was the author of the screenplay of Ken Loach's Ladybird, Ladybird and co-author of Aimée & Jaguar by German director Max Färberböck.Munro is also known for being the author of the last Doctor Who television...

     for Bold Girls
  • 1990 – Clare McIntyre for My Heart's a Suitcase
  • 1989 – Stephen Jeffreys
    Stephen Jeffreys
    Stephen Jeffreys is a British playwright.His plays include Like Dolls or Angels ; Carmen 1936 ; Valued Friends ; The Clink ; The Libertine - also a screenplay filmed with Johnny Depp; A Going...

     for Valued Friends

Best Designer

  • 2010 – Bunny Christie for The White Guard (National)
  • 2010 – Christopher Oram
    Christopher Oram
    Christopher Oram is a British theatre set and costume designer.-Background:He trained at the West Sussex College of Art and Design ....

     for Red
  • 2008 – Neil Murray
    Neil Murray
    Neil Murray may refer to:*Neil Murray , British musician who has played bass for a number of notable rock bands*Neil Murray , Australian singer/songwriter who has worked solo and as a member of the Warumpi Band...

    for Brief Encounter
    Brief Encounter
    Brief Encounter is a 1945 British film directed by David Lean about the conventions of British suburban life, centring on a housewife for whom real love brings unexpectedly violent emotions. The film stars Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carey...

  • 2007 – Rae Smith and Handspring Puppet Company
    Handspring Puppet Company
    The Handspring Puppet Company is a puppetry performance and design company established in 1981 by Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones, situated in Cape Town, South Africa. Thys Stander is the company's chief puppet maker.-History:...

     for War Horse
    War Horse (play)
    War Horse is a play based on the book of the same name by acclaimed children's writer Michael Morpurgo, adapted for stage by Nick Stafford. Originally Morpurgo thought "they must be mad" to try to make a play from his best-selling 1982 novel. He was proved wrong by the play's instant success...

    (National Theatre)
  • 2006 – Punchdrunk Faust Company
    Punchdrunk
    Punchdrunk is a British theatre company, formed in 2000, the pioneer of a form of "immersive" presentation in which the audience is free to choose what to watch and where to go. This format is related to "promenade theatre"....

     for Faust
    Faust
    Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...

  • 2005 – Timothy Bird and David Farley
    David Farley
    David Farley, born September 25, 1971 is an American author and journalist. He is originally from Dubuque, Iowa, but spent his formative years in Simi Valley, California...

     for Sunday in the Park with George
    Sunday in the Park with George
    Sunday in the Park with George is a 1984 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. The musical was inspired by the painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat...

  • 2004 – Christopher Oram
    Christopher Oram
    Christopher Oram is a British theatre set and costume designer.-Background:He trained at the West Sussex College of Art and Design ....

     for Suddenly Last Summer
  • 2003 – Bob Crowley
    Bob Crowley
    Bob Crowley is a theatre director, scenic and costume designer.Born in Cork, Ireland, he is the brother of director John Crowley...

     for Mourning Becomes Electra
    Mourning Becomes Electra
    Mourning Becomes Electra is a play cycle written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. The play premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre on 26 October 1931 where it ran for 150 performances before closing in March 1932...

  • 2002 – William Dudley
    William Dudley (designer)
    William Dudley is a British theatre designer.Dudley is the son of William Stuart Dudley and his wife Dorothy Irene. He was educated at the St Martin's School of Art and the Slade School of Art...

     for The Coast of Utopia
    The Coast of Utopia
    The Coast of Utopia is a 2002 trilogy of plays: Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage, written by Tom Stoppard with focus on the philosophical debates in pre-revolution Russia between 1833 and 1866...

    trilogy
  • 2001 – Paul Brown  for Platonov
    Platonov (play)
    Platonov is the name in English given to an early, untitled play written in Russian by Anton Chekhov in 1878. It was the first large-scale drama by Chekhov written specifically for Maria Yermolova, rising star of Maly Theatre...

  • 2000 – Paul Brown for Coriolanus
    Coriolanus (play)
    Coriolanus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1605 and 1608. The play is based on the life of the legendary Roman leader, Gaius Marcius Coriolanus.-Characters:*Caius Martius, later surnamed Coriolanus...

    , Richard II
    Richard II (play)
    King Richard the Second is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to be written in approximately 1595. It is based on the life of King Richard II of England and is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by some scholars as the Henriad, followed by three plays concerning Richard's...

    and The Tempest
    The Tempest
    The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...

  • 1999 – Julie Taymor
    Julie Taymor
    Julie Taymor is an American director of theater, opera and film. Taymor's work has received many accolades from critics, and she has earned two Tony Awards out of four nominations, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design, an Emmy Award and an Academy Award nomination for Original Song...

     and Richard Hudson
    Richard Hudson
    Richard “Dick” Hudson is a British linguist. He has lived in England for most of his life . He turned into a linguist via Loughborough Grammar School in Leicestershire , Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and the School of Oriental and African Studies...

      for The Lion King
    The Lion King (musical)
    The Lion King is a musical based on the 1994 Disney animated film of the same name with music by Elton John and lyrics by Tim Rice along with the musical score created by Hans Zimmer with choral arrangements by Lebo M. Directed by Julie Taymor, the musical features actors in animal costumes as well...

  • 1998 – Richard Hoover  for Not About Nightingales
    Not About Nightingales
    Not About Nightingales is a three act play written by Tennessee Williams in 1938. The play itself focuses on a group of inmates who go on a hunger strike in attempt to better their situation. There is also a soft love story, with the characters Eva, the new secretary at the prison, and Jim, a...

    ; and
  • 1998 – Phelim McDermott, Julian Crouch and Graeme Gilmour  for Shockheaded Peter
    Struwwelpeter
    Der Struwwelpeter is a popular German children's book by Heinrich Hoffmann. It comprises ten illustrated and rhymed stories, mostly about children. Each has a clear moral that demonstrates the disastrous consequences of misbehavior in an exaggerated way. The title of the first story provides the...

  • 1997 – John Napier
    John Napier (designer)
    John Napier is a set designer for Broadway and London theatrical performances.-Biography:John Napier studied at Hornsey College of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts, studying under notable set designer Ralph Koltai....

      for Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up
  • 1996 – Robert Innes Hopkins  for The Comedy of Errors
    The Comedy of Errors
    The Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare's earliest plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. The Comedy of Errors is one of only two of Shakespeare's...

    and The Weavers
    The Weavers (play)
    The Weavers is a play written by the German playwright Gerhart Hauptmann in 1892.-Plot summary:Most of the characters are proletarians struggling for their rights. Unlike most plays of any period, as pointed out many times in literature criticism and introductions, the play has no true central...

  • 1995 – Robin Don  for The Winter Guest
    The Winter Guest
    The Winter Guest was British actor Alan Rickman's debut as a director, and stars Emma Thompson and Phyllida Law.-Plot:Set in Scotland on one wintry day, the film focuses on eight people: a mother and daughter, Elspeth and Frances ; two young boys skipping school, Sam and Tom ; two old women who...

  • 1994 – Mark Thompson  for The Kitchen
  • 1993 – Ian MacNeil for Machinal
    Machinal
    Machinal is a play written by American playwright and journalist Sophie Treadwell, inspired by the real life case of convicted and executed murderess Ruth Snyder...

  • 1992 – Ian MacNeil  for An Inspector Calls
    An Inspector Calls
    An Inspector Calls is a play written by English dramatist J. B. Priestley, first performed in 1945 in the Soviet Union and 1946 in the UK. It is considered to be one of Priestley's best known works for the stage and one of the classics of mid-20th century English theatre...

  • 1991 – Bob Crowley
    Bob Crowley
    Bob Crowley is a theatre director, scenic and costume designer.Born in Cork, Ireland, he is the brother of director John Crowley...

      for Murmuring Judges
    Murmuring Judges
    Murmuring Judges, first performed in 1991, is a scathing attack on the British legal system, and the second of a trilogy of plays by David Hare examining Great Britain's most hallowed institutions...

  • 1990 – Mark Thompson for The Wind in the Willows
    The Wind in the Willows
    The Wind in the Willows is a classic of children's literature by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animal characters in a pastoral version of England...

  • 1989 – John Napier
    John Napier (designer)
    John Napier is a set designer for Broadway and London theatrical performances.-Biography:John Napier studied at Hornsey College of Art and the Central School of Arts and Crafts, studying under notable set designer Ralph Koltai....

     for Miss Saigon
    Miss Saigon
    Miss Saigon is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, with lyrics by Boublil and Richard Maltby, Jr.. It is based on Giacomo Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly, and similarly tells the tragic tale of a doomed romance involving an Asian woman abandoned by her American lover...

  • 1988 – Richard Hudson
    Richard Hudson (stage designer)
    Richard Hudson is a Zimbabwean stage designer best known for his work for The Lion King, which won him the Tony Award for Best Scenic Design and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design....

     for the Old Vic
    Old Vic
    The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, it was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 when it was known formally as the Royal Victoria Hall. In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian...

     season
  • 1987 – (tie) Michael Taylor for Attractions
  • 1987 – (tie) Maria Bjornson
    Maria Björnson
    Maria Björnson was an acclaimed theatre stage designer, born in Paris to Norwegian and Romanian parents....

     for Follies
    Follies
    Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman. The story concerns a reunion in a crumbling Broadway theatre, scheduled for demolition, of the past performers of the "Weismann's Follies," a musical revue , that played in that theatre between the World Wars...

  • 1986 – (tie) Ezio Frigerid for The House of Bernarda Alba
  • 1986 – (tie) Maria Bjornson
    Maria Björnson
    Maria Björnson was an acclaimed theatre stage designer, born in Paris to Norwegian and Romanian parents....

     for The Phantom of the Opera
    The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical)
    The Phantom of the Opera is a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the French novel Le Fantôme de l'Opéra by Gaston Leroux.The music was composed by Lloyd Webber, and most lyrics were written by Charles Hart, with additional lyrics by Richard Stilgoe. Alan Jay Lerner was an early collaborator,...

  • 1985 – William Dudley
    William Dudley (designer)
    William Dudley is a British theatre designer.Dudley is the son of William Stuart Dudley and his wife Dorothy Irene. He was educated at the St Martin's School of Art and the Slade School of Art...

     for The Mysteries
    The Mysteries
    The Mysteries is a version of the medieval English mystery plays presented at London's National Theatre in 1977. The cycle of three plays tells the story of the Bible from the creation to the last judgement....

    , The Real Inspector Hound
    The Real Inspector Hound
    The Real Inspector Hound is a short, one-act play by Tom Stoppard. The plot follows two theatre critics named Moon and Birdboot who are watching a ludicrous setup of a country house murder mystery, in the style of a whodunit...

    , The Critic
    The Critic (play)
    The Critic: or, a Tragedy Rehearsed is a satire by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. It was first staged at Drury Lane Theatre in 1779. It is a burlesque on stage acting and play production conventions, and Sheridan considered the first act to be his finest piece of writing...

    , The Merry Wives of Windsor
    The Merry Wives of Windsor
    The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. It features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff, and is Shakespeare's only play to deal exclusively with contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life...

    and Mutiny
  • 1984 – Alison Chitty
    Alison Chitty
    Alison Chitty OBE is an Olivier Award winning production designer and set and costume designer, known for her collaborations with Mike Leigh, Francesca Zambello and Sir Peter Hall. She is also the Director of the Motley Theatre Design Course, a successor to Motley Theatre Design Group...

     for Venice Preserved
  • 1983 – Voytek for Great and Small
  • 1982 – (tie) John Gunter for Guys and Dolls
    Guys and Dolls
    Guys and Dolls is a musical with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. It is based on "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" and "Blood Pressure", two short stories by Damon Runyon, and also borrows characters and plot elements from other Runyon stories, most notably...

    and The Beggar's Opera
    The Beggar's Opera
    The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...

  • 1982 – (tie) Grant Hicks for True West
    True West (play)
    True West is a play by American playwright Sam Shepard. Like most of his works it is inspired by myths of American life and popular culture. The play is a more traditional narrative than most of the plays that Shepard has written.-Plot:...

    and The Double Man

The Jack Tinker Award for Most Promising Newcomer (other than a playwright)

  • 2010 – Daniel Kaluuya
    Daniel Kaluuya
    Daniel Kaluuya is an English actor, comedian and writer, who is best known for playing Posh Kenneth in the E4 teen-drama Skins. He has most recently been seen starring in the BBC dark comedy series Psychoville playing Michael Fry and Mac in the new BBC 3's horror drama The Fades.-Biography:Kaluuya...

     for Sucker Punch
  • 2009 – Tom Sturridge
    Tom Sturridge
    Thomas Sidney Jerome "Tom" Sturridge is an English actor best known for his work in Being Julia, Like Minds, and The Boat That Rocked. As of September 2010, he was filming a role in Walter Salles's highly anticipated film adaptation of Jack Kerouac's On the Road.-Personal life:Sturridge was born...

     for Punk Rock
  • 2008 – Ella Smith
    Ella Smith (actress)
    Ella Smith is a Welsh actress. She trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and is a former member of the National Youth Theatre....

     for Fat Pig
    Fat Pig
    - Plot synopsis :Fat Pig tells us the story of Tom, a stereotypical professional in a large city, who falls for a very plus-size librarian named Helen. They meet in a crowded cafeteria at lunchtime and get to talking. Tom is taken with her brash acceptance of the way people see her and her...

  • 2007 – Leanne Jones
    Leanne Jones
    Leanne Jones is a British actress. She was born in Stoke on Trent and grew up in St Ives, Cambridgeshire, where she attended St Ivo School, before studying at the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in Wood Green, in north London, graduating in 2006...

     for Hairspray
    Hairspray (musical)
    Hairspray is a musical with music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Wittman and Shaiman and a book by Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan, based on the 1988 John Waters film Hairspray. The songs include 1960s-style dance music and "downtown" rhythm and blues...

  • 2006 – Connie Fisher
    Connie Fisher
    Connie Fisher is a Welsh actress and singer, who won the BBC One talent contest, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?...

     for The Sound of Music
    The Sound of Music
    The Sound of Music is a musical by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers...

  • 2006 – joint award for Andrew Garfield
    Andrew Garfield
    Andrew Russell Garfield is an American-English actor who has appeared in radio, theatre, film, and television. His early roles include the films Lions for Lambs, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and Boy A, which garnered him the 2007 BAFTA Television Award for "Best Actor".Garfield achieved...

     for Citizenship and The Overwhelming
  • 2005 – Mariah Gale
    Mariah Gale
    Mariah Gale is a British-Australian actress who won the 2006 Ian Charleson Award.She studied at Birmingham University and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama....

     for 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
    'Tis Pity She's a Whore
    'Tis Pity She's a Whore is a tragedy written by John Ford. It was likely first performed between 1629 and 1633, by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre. The play was first published in 1633, in a quarto printed by Nicholas Okes for the bookseller Richard Collins...

  • 2004 – Eddie Redmayne
    Eddie Redmayne
    Edward John David "Eddie" Redmayne is an English actor and model. Redmayne won the 2010 Tony Award as best featured actor in a play for his performance in Red.-Early life:...

     for The Goat: or, Who is Sylvia?
  • 2003 – Lisa Dillon
    Lisa Dillon
    Lisa Dillon is Critics Circle Award-winning English actress.-Theatre:Whilst training at RADA, Dillon appeared in several training productions, including: Hamlet and The Tempest by William Shakespeare, The Devils by John Whiting, The Devil's Law Case by John Webster, Yentl by Leah Napolin and The...

     for Iphigenia and The Master Builder
    The Master Builder
    The Master Builder is a play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was first published in December 1892 and is regarded as one of Ibsen's most significant and revealing works.-Performance:...

  • 2002 – Alison Pargeter
    Alison Pargeter
    Alison Pargeter is an English actress who played the roles of stalker Sarah Cairns in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, also Mary Slessor in a 11-part television series of Mary Slessor, and the Nag's Head barmaid called Val in the BBC Only Fools and Horses prequel Rock & Chips.-Theatre:Pargeter was a...

     for Damsels in Distress
    Damsels in Distress (plays)
    Damsels in Distress is a trilogy of plays written in 2001 by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. The three plays, GamePlan, FlatSpin and RolePlay, were originally performed as a set by the Stephen Joseph Theatre Company . The plays were written to be performed by the same seven actors using the same...

  • 2001 – Lyndsey Marshal
    Lyndsey Marshal
    Lyndsey Marshal is an English actress best known for her performance in The Hours as the recurring character Cleopatra on HBO's Rome, and as Lady Sarah Hill in BBC period drama Garrow's Law.-Biography:...

     for Redundant
    Redundant (play)
    Redundant by Leo Butler premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 2001 starring Lyndsey Marshal and directed by Dominic Cooke.Set in seventeen year old Lucy's Sheffield council flat, the play follows a year in the promiscuous teenager's life as she makes one disastrous choice after another. It is a...

    and Boston Marriage
    Boston marriage
    Boston marriage as a term is said to have been in use in New England in the decades spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries to describe two women living together, independent of financial support from a man. The term was little known until the debut in 2000 of the David Mamet play of the...

  • 2000 – Chiwetel Ejiofor
    Chiwetel Ejiofor
    Chiwetelu Umeadi "Chiwetel" Ejiofor, OBE is an English actor of stage and screen. He has received numerous acting awards and award nominations, including the 2006 BAFTA Awards Rising Star, three Golden Globe Awards' nominations, and the 2008 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his...

     for Blue/Orange
    BLUE/ORANGE
    Blue/Orange is a play by written by English dramatist, Joe Penhall. A sardonically comic piece which touches on race, mental illness, and 21st century British life, it premiered at the Cottesloe Theatre in April 2000, starring Bill Nighy, Andrew Lincoln and Chiwetel Ejiofor...

  • 1999 – Eve Best
    Eve Best
    Eve Best is an English actress, best known for her roles as Dr. O'Hara in the Showtime television series Nurse Jackie, as Wallis Simpson in the 2010 film The King's Speech, and Dolley Madison in the 2011 American Experience television special about that First Lady.-Early life and education:Best...

     for 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
    'Tis Pity She's a Whore
    'Tis Pity She's a Whore is a tragedy written by John Ford. It was likely first performed between 1629 and 1633, by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre. The play was first published in 1633, in a quarto printed by Nicholas Okes for the bookseller Richard Collins...

  • 1998 – Mick Gordon, Gate Theatre, London
  • 1997 – Liza Walker
    Liza Walker
    Liza Walker is an English actress. She is the former girlfriend of 1990s pop star Chesney Hawkes.-Filmography:*El Sueno Del Mono Loco, 1990*Buddy's Song, 1990*Teenage Health Freak, 1991 TV Series*Century, 1993...

     for Closer
    Closer (play)
    Closer is the third play written by English playwright Patrick Marber. The play was premiered at the Royal National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre in London in 1997, and made its North American debut at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway on 25 January 1999....

  • 1996 – James Callis
    James Callis
    James Callis is a British actor. He is best known for playing Dr. Gaius Baltar in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica miniseries and television series, and Bridget Jones' best friend in Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason...

     for Old Wicked Songs
    Old Wicked Songs
    Old Wicked Songs is a two character play written by Jon Marans whose work received a nomination for the 1996 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Other works by Marans include A Strange and Separate People, Jumping for Joy, Legacy of the Dragonslayers and the musical Irrationals, .Old Wicked Songs was first...


Most Promising Newcomer (other than a playwright)

  • 1995 – Victoria Hamilton
    Victoria Hamilton
    Victoria Sharp is an English actress who performs under the stage name Victoria Hamilton.-Early life:Hamilton was born on 5 April 1971 in Wimbledon, London, England, and grew up in Godalming, Surrey. She trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.-Career:Hamilton is best known for her...

     for The Master Builder
    The Master Builder
    The Master Builder is a play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was first published in December 1892 and is regarded as one of Ibsen's most significant and revealing works.-Performance:...

    and Retreat
  • 1994 – Rachel Weisz
    Rachel Weisz
    Rachel Hannah Weisz born 7 March 1970)is an English-American film and theatre actress and former fashion model. She started her acting career at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she co-founded the theatrical group Cambridge Talking Tongues...

     for Design for Living
    Design for Living
    Design for Living is a comedy play written by Noël Coward in 1932. It concerns a trio of artistic characters, Gilda, Otto and Leo, and their complicated three-way relationship. Originally written to star Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt and Coward, it was premiered on Broadway, partly because its risqué...

  • 1993 – Emma Fielding
    Emma Fielding
    Emma Georgina Annalies Fielding is an English actress.-Biography:The lapsed Roman Catholic daughter of a British Army soldier, Fielding spent much of her childhood in Malaysia and Nigeria, and a period in Malvern above her grandparents' betting shop...

     for Arcadia
    Arcadia (play)
    Arcadia is a 1993 play by Tom Stoppard concerning the relationship between past and present and between order and disorder and the certainty of knowledge...

    and The School for Wives
    The School for Wives
    The School for Wives is a theatrical comedy written by the seventeenth century French playwright Molière and considered by some critics to be one of his finest achievements. It was first staged at the Palais Royal theatre on 26 December 1662 for the brother of the King...

  • 1992 – Rufus Sewell
    Rufus Sewell
    Rufus Frederik Sewell is an English actor. In film, he has appeared in The Woodlanders, Dangerous Beauty, Dark City, A Knight's Tale, The Illusionist, Tristan and Isolde, and Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence. On television, he starred in the 2010 mini-series The Pillars of the Earth...

     for Making It Better
  • 1991 – Lia Williams
    Lia Williams
    Lia Williams is an English actress and film director, notable for many stage, film, and television appearances. She is possibly best known for her role in the motion picture, Dirty Weekend...

     for The Revengers' Comedies
    The Revengers' Comedies
    The Revengers' Comedies is a play by Alan Ayckbourn. Its title references that of The Revenger's Tragedy. The play is an epic piece running more than five hours and was designed to be presented in two parts...

  • 1990 – Sara Crowe
    Sara Crowe
    Sara Crowe , also known as Sara K. Crowe, is a Scottish film and stage actress, who mainly plays comedy roles.-Career:...

     for Private Lives
    Private Lives
    Private Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for...

  • 1989 – joint winners
    • Sam Mendes
      Sam Mendes
      Samuel Alexander "Sam" Mendes, CBE is an English stage and film director. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning work on his debut film American Beauty and his dark re-inventions of the stage musicals Cabaret , Oliver! , Company and Gypsy . He's currently working on the 23rd James Bond...

       as director of the Minerva Theatre, Chichester
      Minerva Theatre, Chichester
      The Minerva Theatre is a studio theatre seating at full capacity 283. It is run as part of the adjacent Chichester Festival Theatre, located in Chichester, England, and was opened in 1989...

    • Julia Ormond
      Julia Ormond
      Julia Karin Ormond is an English actress who has appeared in film and television and on stage.-Early life and education:...

       for Faith, Hope and Charity
      Faith, Hope and Charity
      Saints Faith, Hope and Charity , Church Slavonic: are a group of Christian martyred saints. Their mother is said to have been Sophia ; Sapientia is also mentioned in some accounts, though not as their mother. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, these were, in fact, two groups bearing the...


Other UK Theatre Awards

  • Laurence Olivier Awards
  • Evening Standard Awards
  • Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland
    Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland
    The Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland were inaugurated in May 2003, and are adjudicated by a panel of all the regular Scottish theatre critics.The 2009 ceremony took place at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre on June 14...

  • Theatre Book Prize
    Theatre Book Prize
    The Theatre Book Prize was established to celebrate the Jubilee of the Society for Theatre Research , and to encourage writing and publication of books on theatre history and practice—both those that present the theatre of the past and those that record contemporary theatre for the future...

  • TMA Theatre Awards

External links

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