The 2025 Oliviers: small is beautiful
There weren’t many surprises at the 2025 Olivier Awards. That’s not to say the winners didn’t deserve their awards. John Lithgow has received huge critical acclaim for his performance as Roald Dahl in Giant, Imelda Staunton has had a terrific run over the past few years and won huge standing ovations for Hello Dolly! and Lesley Manville was terrific as Jocasta in Robert Icke’s award-winning production of Oedipus. Fiddler on the Roof, which is about to transfer to the Barbican next month, received thirteen Olivier nominations, equalling a record set by the musical Hamilton in 2018. It was also hardly surprising that one of the actresses in The Years won an award.
It’s worth noting that neither the National Theatre nor the Old Vic nor the Coliseum won any Oliviers. The National Theatre has not fared well under Rufus Norris, after the golden years under Peter Hall, Richard Eyre, Trevor Nunn and Nicholas Hytner. Norris’s production of Nye was astonishingly bad and it’s hard to believe that it’s going to be revived.
What was especially disappointing about the 2025 Oliviers was how much it was dominated by the West End, whether musicals like The Comic Case of Benjamin Button, Hello Dolly! Titanique or MJ The Musical, classics like Oedipus, or exciting new plays like Giant and The Years. Some of the best plays I have seen in the past year, however, have appeared at small theatres like the Southwark Playhouse and the Park Theatre.
Kenneth Tigar gave a brilliant performance in a one-man show, The Happiest Man on Earth, as the Auschwitz survivor, Eddie Jaku, and deserved his standing ovation from a packed house. Farewell, Mr. Haffmann, at the Park Theatre, is set in occupied Paris, is full of twists and turns and menace, and beautifully performed by a small cast. The Finborough Theatre in Earls Court staged the world premiere of a new adaptation of The Passenger by Nadya Menuhin, based on the bestselling novel by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, and directed by multi-award-winning former artistic director of the Young Vic, Tim Supple, for five weeks from 10 February–15 March 2025. Perhaps best of all was another one-man show, this time at Riverside Studios: Second Best starring Asa Butterfield, best known from the TV series, Sex Education. It was his stage debut and was an absolute tour de force playing to packed houses.
None of these plays are classics like Oedipus, none are famous musicals like Hello, Dolly! or Fiddler on the Roof, and apart from Butterfield there were no stars to be seen to compare with John Lithgow or Imelda Staunton, Adrien Brody, Mark Strong or Romola Garai, nor famous characters like Roald Dahl, Michael Jackson or Tevye.
In a moving speech on Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday morning, Lesley Manville called for better funding for regional theatres (“Over the years I have seen theatre by theatre by theatre close. It’s tragic.”) and for more leading actors to follow in the footsteps of Sir Ian McKellen, Ralph Fiennes and Roger Allam, touring the country and bringing audiences to regional theatres. The same is true of small independent theatres in London. One major step would be for the Olivier Awards to recognise ambitious new productions in theatres like The Southwark Playhouse and Riverside Studios. The latter launched Operation Mincemeat, which is now playing to packed houses both on Broadway and in the West End.
Do we really need more awards for Starlight Express or for musicals based on movies like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button? Perhaps it’s time for the Oliviers to create new awards: for best productions at a small independent theatre and at a regional theatre. The publicity might bring bigger audiences to less well-known theatres — without which the West End would wither away.
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