‘View from the Bridge’ wins three Oliviers

A View from the Bridge led the field for stage dramas at the Olivier awards on Sunday night, winning three awards in the annual celebration of London theatre.

Mark Strong won best actor for his performance as the longshoreman Eddie Carbone in Arthur Miller’s masterwork, while Belgian director Ivo Van Hove took the trophy for best director. The production also garnered the award for best revival, against competition that included A Streetcar Named Desire and The Crucible.

A hit at the Young Vic, later transferring to the Wyndham, A View from the Bridge had been expected to do well, receiving seven nominations, more than any other stage play. Accepting the best actor award, Mr Strong said he had been struck by the power of the play to engage audiences. “I have never been in a production that people wanted to talk about so much,” he said.

After losing out on five previous Olivier nominations, Penelope Wilton was triumphant on her sixth, winning best actress for Taken at Midnight, the story of a mother battling to secure the release of her son from Nazi captivity. She said it was a “difficult play” that nonetheless “resonated with audiences”, providing a salutary reminder of the importance of democracy and free speech.

British playwright Mike Bartlett won two awards, best new play for King Charles III — set to transfer to New York later this year — and an outstanding achievement award for Bull, a drama about office politics. He was one of several theatre figures to use the awards platform to argue the case for subsidised theatre in the UK amid government funding cuts: “Bull as a play wouldn’t work in the commercial sector.”

After 40 years away from the London stage, Dame Angela Lansbury took her first Olivier award — and won a standing ovation from the audience — for the best supporting actress award for her performance as Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit at the Gielgud. Accepting her award, the ebullient 89-year-old actress said: “I’m creeping up to 90 and feeling like a million dollars … It’s the life — and thank God I’m still in it.”

Smaller theatres away from the West End did well: Hampstead Theatre and the Young Vic took four awards each, the former for the Kinks musical Sunny Afternoon and the latter for Mike Bartlett’s Bull, as well as for A View from the Bridge. Ray Davies, the former Kinks frontman who received the Autograph Sound Award for Sunny Afternoon, said he had been “writing the score all his life” and was planning to start another musical later this year.

Two musicals — Memphis the Musical and Beautiful, the Carole King musical — had been expected to dominate the awards, starting the evening with 17 nominations between them. In the end Memphis came away with two awards, best sound design and best theatre choreographer; while Beautiful won awards for Katie Brayben and Lorna Want, respectively for best musical actress and best supporting actress in a musical.

Ivo Van Hove, the Belgian director, said he had hesitated when offered the chance to take on A View from the Bridge, having never directed a work by Miller. But though it had once been regarded as avant garde, its reception showed it was now embraced by the mainstream theatre-going public. “Arthur Miller is a complex playwright who writes beautiful, ambivalent texts,” he said.

Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies won best supporting actor award for Nathaniel Parker for his portrayal of Tudor king Henry VIII. The stage plays of the Booker Prize winning novel series by Hilary Mantel — recently dramatised for television by the BBC — opened on Broadway this week, to mixed reviews from New York critics.

Hosted by Lenny Henry at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, the 39th awards featured live performances from dancer Akram Khan and Cats actress Nicole Scherzinger, among others.

The most surprising acceptance speech came from Kevin Spacey, who was receiving a special award of thanks for his work as artistic director at the Old Vic. Thanking his partners at the historic theatre, his speech sequed into a full-throated performance of the Simon and Garfunkel classic, “Bridge over Troubled Water”, accompanied by a full orchestra and massed chorus.

Photograph: AFP