Olivier Award Noms

[edjames]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/arts/olivier-awards-juliet-salesman.html

 

‘& Juliet,’ a Jukebox Musical, Leads Olivier Award Nominations

 

Though panned by critics, a show based on the songs of the pop producer Max Martin is up for nine awards at Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.

 

LONDON — “& Juliet,” a musical that uses the songs of the chart-topping pop producer Max Martin to retell “Romeo & Juliet,” dominated the nominations for this year’s Olivier Awards — the British equivalent of the Tonys — that were announced in London on Tuesday.

 

The musical, which includes songs by Britney Spears and Ariana Grande, secured nine nominations, despite reviews that were mostly lukewarm at best.

Matt Wolf, in a review for The New York Times, said that “& Juliet” made very little plot go a long way, before adding: “I confess to hardly being the preferred demographic for a show that clearly wants to rival the Broadway-bound ‘Six’ in the pop-anthem sweepstakes.”

“It’s essentially glorified panto,” wrote Dominic Cavendish wrote in The Daily Telegraph, referring to the campy British theater spectacles that popular around Christmastime. “Whether it outlasts the panto season, that is the question,” he added.

 

The nine nominations for “& Juliet,” including best new musical, put it one ahead of Trevor Nunn’s revival of “Fiddler on the Roof,” which opened at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2018 before transferring to the West End. “Musically, geopolitically, emotionally, this Fiddler raises the roof,” wrote Mark Lawson in The Guardian.

The nonmusical categories were led by two plays: a revival of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” starring Wendell Pierce, and a revival of Henrik Ibsen’s “Rosmersholm” at the Duke of York’s Theater. Both gained five nominations.

“Death of a Salesman” was expected to do well, having won praise from critics. Directed by Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell, it reimagined Willy Loman, the doomed title character, as a black man in a white man’s world. “What’s most surprising,” Ben Brantley wrote in his review for The New York Times, “is how vital it is.”

“If this ‘Salesman’ had been retooled to be solely about race, it would shrink and oversimplify Miller’s play,” Brantley added. “Instead, race expands and exacerbates Willy’s suppressed fears that the world regards him as outcast, a loser, a clown.”

Pierce was nominated for best actor, and will compete with James McAvoy, nominated for “Cyrano de Bergerac” at the Playhouse Theater, Andrew Scott for “Present Laughter” at The Old Vic, and Toby Jones for “Uncle Vanya” at the Harold Pinter Theater.

The best actress category sees Phoebe Waller-Bridge nominated for a revival of “Fleabag.” She is up against Hayley Atwell for “Rosmersholm,” Sharon D. Clarke for “Death of a Salesman” and Juliet Stevenson for “The Doctor” at the Almeida Theatre, which transfers to the Duke of York’s Theater in April.

The best new play category includes nominations for Lucy Prebble’s “A Very Expensive Poison,” about a Russian assassination on British soil, and Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,”about Jewish life in Vienna, at Wyndham’s Theater through June 13.

They will compete against Robert Icke’s “The Doctor” and “The Ocean at the End of the Lane,” an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman novel.

The winners are to be announced in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London on April 5.