LONDON - A stage adaptation of Life of Pi and a revival of the musical Cabaret were the big winners at Sunday’s Olivier Awards. It was a jubilant night for theatre at the Royal Albert Hall as the stage industry celebrated a year in which performances resumed after lockdown. Cabaret stars Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley won acting prizes while the show was named best musical revival. Life of Pi, based on the Booker Prize-winning novel, was named best new play and scooped several technical prizes.
The play’s lead, Hiran Abeysekera, also won best actor, while the seven performers who play the tiger shared the best supporting actor prize. Cabaret’s success at the first Olivier ceremony since 2020 follows a critically-acclaimed sell-out run for the show which saw London’s Playhouse Theatre transformed into the Kit Kat Club.
The production scooped seven of the 11 prizes it was nominated for, including all four of the musical acting prizes for Redmayne, Buckley, Elliot Levey and Liza Sadovy.
Accepting his prize for his performance as the famous Emcee in the show, Redmayne said: “This is the dream. For me, this is the one.
“This was the part that I played when I was a kid in school. It was the thing that got my passion for theatre really fuelled.” Buckley, who played Sally Bowles, said in her acceptance speech: “It’s such a huge privilege to be part of this community which I consider my family. Thank you for welcoming me in all those years ago. This is just so lovely.”
Rebecca Frecknall was also named best director, and she dedicated the prize to her late father, who she explained had played Emcee as a student in 1975. Life of Pi, a philosophical novel by Yann Martel, was also adapted into a film in 2012 which starred Suraj Sharma and won four Oscars. Playwright Lolita Chakrabarti thanked Martel for giving her the “complete freedom to do what I wanted with his story” as she accepted one of the five prizes to be won by the stage adaptation. She also thanked her husband, actor Adrian Lester. “When I started writing, he was my biggest fan and encouraged me completely. When all the doors were shut, he said ‘keep knocking, because they’ll open’,” she recalled.
In a touching speech, the show’s star Abeysekera said he was “overwhelmed” to win best actor. He paid tribute to his home country of Sri Lanka, which he said was going through a “tough time now... I think of you and wish I was there with you”.
Sri Lanka is facing a serious financial crisis and there have been protests in recent days calling for the resignation of president Gotabaya Rajapaksa.