Tom Hiddleston, Jenna Coleman, Sheila Atim and David Tennant are among the stars celebrating London’s stage talent at the 67th Evening Standard Theatre Awards on Sunday.
They will be at the event at Claridge’s joining Tuppence Middleton, Omari Douglas, Layton Williams, Hayley Atwell, Jake Shears and his Cabaret co-star Rebecca Lucy Taylor, AKA Self Esteem, among others, to hand out awards.
The event, hosted by the newspaper’s proprietor Lord Lebedev with the help of Ian McKellen, is presented by Susan Wokoma. The writer and actor, who played Edith in the Enola Holmes films and whose stage work includes appearances at the Bush, the National and the Royal Court, is about to start work on Three Weeks which she will direct and star in.
She said: “Theatre is always a labour of love and London stages have faced their fair share of difficulties in the last few years. So I think it’s paramount we celebrate excellence while we can.”
Among the awards presented on the night are best play, best actor and the Milton Shulman Award for best director which is named after the Standard’s late theatre critic. Other awards include the Natasha Richardson Award for best actress in association with Mithridate and the Charles Wintour Award for most promising playwright — named in honour of the paper’s editor for many years.
Also awarded on the night is the Lebedev Award, which is given to an individual or institution for lifetime achievement or a specific critically-acclaimed piece of work or series as well as two special Editor’s Awards.
Among those in the running are Paul Mescal, shortlisted for best actor for his role in A Streetcar Named Desire, with his co-stars Anjana Vasan and Patsy Ferran up for best actress. Mescal is up against Andrew Scott, who won in 2019 and is shortlisted for Vanya, as well as Paapa Essiedu for The Effect, and Mark Gatiss for The Motive and the Cue. The shortlist for best actress is completed by Rachael Stirling for Private Lives and Sophie Okonedo for Medea.
Also in the running is Nicole Scherzinger for Sunset Boulevard. She is nominated for best musical performance along with Charlie Stemp in Crazy For You, Kyle Ramar Freeman in A Strange Loop and Marisha Wallace in Guys & Dolls.
James Graham’s Dear England is shortlisted for best play alongside Jack Thorne’s The Motive and the Cue, Sam Holcroft’s A Mirror and Ryan Calais Cameron’s Retrogade.
Previous winners at the awards, which were first presented in 1955, include Dame Judi Dench, Dame Maggie Smith, Ralph Fiennes, Laurence Olivier, Benedict Cumberbatch, Gillian Anderson and Glenn Close.
