Olivier Awards 2024: 'Sunset Boulevard' and Star Nicole Scherzinger Win Big

A radical remake of the Hollywood film noir musical Sunset Blvd was the big winner on Sunday (April 14) on stage at London's Olivier Awards, taking home seven trophies, including best musical revival and best actress for American star Nicole Scherzinger.

State of the nation drama with a football theme Dear England was named best new work, while Sarah Snook and Mark Gatiss was among the acting winners.

Scherzinger was honored for her performance as silver screen star Norma Desmond in a flamboyant revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Sunset Blvdthree decades after the musical debuted in the 1990s. Her co-star Tom Francis won the corresponding best actor award as a struggling screenwriter who fatally crosses Desmond's path.

Jamie Lloyd won the directing trophy for the technically innovative production, which combines live video with stage action, and also won Oliviers for sound and lighting design. It's expected to open in New York later this year, and Lloyd predicted it would “hit Broadway.”

Scherzinger said that when she was growing up in Kentucky, she “always wanted to be a singer and do musicals.”

“I dreamed of so many roles that I wanted to play – and honestly this role, Norma Desmond, was not one of those roles,” she said. “But God works in mysterious ways.”

The award for best new musical went to Mincemeat function, a word-of-mouth hit based on a daring real-life espionage operation that deceived the Nazis during World War II. The show began life in a tiny theater in 2019 and has gradually moved to larger venues, garnering accolades along the way.

Stranger Things: The First Shadowa dazzlingly directed prequel to the Netflix supernatural series, was named best new entertainment or comedy.

The Oliviers – the UK equivalent of Broadway's Tony Awards – are celebrating a successful year for new shows in the West End, finally returning from the COVID-19 pandemic. Several winners protested the rising cost of theater tickets and cuts to arts education that were drawing working-class talent away from theater careers and theater audiences.

“If you don't tell a kid to go see a show … they're not going to develop that habit, they're not going to have that experience,” he said Dear England playwright James Graham, who grew up in a small mining town; “So I'm really worried.”

But the mood was largely festive as Ted Lasso Star Hannah Waddingham presided over an exuberant ceremony at London's Royal Albert Hall, opening the show by singing 'Anything Goes' alongside the London Community Gospel Choir. The show was packed with performances from many of the nominated musicals, including Children and dolls, Hadestown and domestic strike The Little Big Things.

The awards, which recognize achievements in theatre, opera and dance, were established in 1976 and named after the late actor-director Laurence Olivier. Winners are selected by voting panels of stage and theater professionals.

Snook – the cunning Shiv Roy Succession – beat out a talented field including Sarah Jessica Parker and Sophie Okonedo to win best actress in a work for The Picture of Dorian Grayan adaptation of Oscar Wilde's cautionary tale in which Snook plays more than two dozen characters.

Backstage, the Emmy-winning Australian performer said the solo show was “a lot harder” than doing TV.

“I've never done anything harder than this,” said Snook, who said she had asked herself “why am I doing a 60,000-word monologue with an 8-month-old baby?” She revealed that she had learned her lines for the project during the filming of its latest series Successionat night while nursing her daughter.

Gatiss — co-creator of the BBC TV series Sherlock — won the best actor trophy for playing theater great John Gielgud The motivation and the mottoJack Thorne's play about the struggle to produce a 1964 production Hamlet with Richard Burton.

Gattis recalled that Gielgud considered award ceremonies “vulgar.”

“I'm very, very excited to be in such wonderfully raunchy company,” he said.

Gattis struck Dear England star Joseph Fiennes and Andrew Scott, who was the favorite to win for the solo show Vanya. Simon Stephens' adaptation of Anton Chekhov took the prize for best revival.

Will Close was named Best Supporting Actor in a Performance for his portrayal of footballer Harry Kane Dear England.

Haydn Gwynne, who died in October, was posthumously awarded the Best Supporting Actress award for her role in the final scene in When Winston went to war with Wirelessabout the early days of radio in Britain.

Awards for supporting performance in a musical were presented for Amy Trigg The Little Big Things and Jak Malone for Mincemeat function.

The show concluded with a tribute to the National Theatre, which turns 60 in 2023 — culminating in a packed cast singing the anthemic 'You'll Never Walk Alone'.