The winners of this year’s Olivier Awards revealed some surprises: OperaUpClose’s debut production of ‘La Bohème’, which played to 35 people in The Cock Tavern, won Best New Opera Production – beating the Royal Opera House; and Roger Allam won Best Actor for his performance of Falstaff in ‘Henry IV’ at Shakespeare’s Globe, beating Derek Jacobi, Rory Kinnear, Mark Rylance and David Suchet.
The National Theatre won seven awards across two productions (‘After the Dance’ and ‘The White Guard’), and The Royal Court Theatre won three, for ‘Tribes’, ‘Sucker Punch’ and ‘Clybourne Park’. Sean Holmes’s production of ‘Blasted’ won the Lyric Hammersmith ‘Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre’, and the award for Best Entertainment went to York Theatre Royal’s ‘The Railway Children’, staged in Waterloo Station.