Cabaret and Life of Pi win prizes at British theatre’s Olivier Awards

Sultry musical Cabaret and fantastical literary adaptation Life of Pi were among the winners on Sunday at British theatre’s Olivier Awards, which returned with a live ceremony and a black-tie crowd after a three-year gap imposed by Covid-19.

The celebration of London theatre, opera and dance came back to London’s Royal Albert Hall for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic closed Britain’s performance venues more than two years ago, weeks before the scheduled 2020 Oliviers show.

Kit Harington, Tom Felton, Emma Corrin and Jonathan Pryce were among the stars who walked the sustainable green carpet, made from reusable grass, before the glitzy, music-filled ceremony.

An intimate production of Cabaret that transformed London’s Playhouse Theatre into the Kit Kat Club in 1930s Berlin had 11 nominations for the Oliviers, Britain’s equivalent of Broadway’s Tony Awards. Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley are nominated in musical leading actor categories for their roles as the Emcee and Sally Bowles.

Cabaret director Rebecca Frecknall took the directing trophy, and said the war in Ukraine gave John Kander and Fred Ebb’s musical about the collapse of democracy and rise of fascism added poignancy.

“In a way it’s quite sad that every time it’s on it feels like it’s been written for today,” she said.

Life of Pi, adapted from Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel about a boy adrift at sea with a tiger, was named best new play. Hiran Abeysekera was named best actor in a play as title character Pi, while – in a first – the supporting actor prize went to seven performers who collectively play the show’s puppet tiger.

Fred Davis, one of the seven, said it was “a landmark moment for puppetry.”