Olivier Awards 2023: Mescal, Comer and Totoro triumphon April 2, 2023 at 9:41 pm

Oscar nominee Paul Mescal, Killing Eve star Jodie Comer and My Neighbour Totoro have all triumphed at this year’s Olivier Awards.

Mescal won best actor for A Streetcar Named Desire, and said he was “standing on the shoulders of the immense talent of so many other people”.

Comer won best actress for Prima Facie, and said she was overwhelmed, praising the “complete sisterhood backstage – a constant network of support”.

My Neighbour Totoro won six Oliviers.

The awards were held at London’s Royal Albert Hall, where Totoro’s wins also included best entertainment or comedy play – plus best director.

Standing at the Sky’s Edge won best new musical, while Beverley Knight won best supporting actress in a musical for her role as suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst in Sylvia.

Former Doctor Who actor Arthur Darvill won best actor in a musical for Oklahoma!.

The show was hosted by Ted Lasso star and three-time Oliviers nominee Hannah Waddingham, who is also going to co-host this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool.

She joked in her opening monologue she would “happily be mauled to death” by Comer in Killing Eve – in which the actress plays a lethal killer.

Waddingham also used sign language to welcome former Strictly Come Dancing winner Rose Ayling-Ellis, who was nominated for best supporting actress for As You Like It.

Mescal thanked his parents in his acceptance speech, and told his Mum, who has been undergoing cancer treatment: “I hope you get better soon.”

He won for playing the toxic Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar, and was Oscar-nominated for playing the troubled Calum in Aftersun, after getting much critical acclaim for playing sensitive Connell in TV drama Normal People.

The actor told the BBC afterwards that when he chooses a role, he is “interested in exploring the myriad of different versions of what masculinity is”.

“I think creative death for me would be for people to predict what I’m doing next,” he added. “I don’t want that. So hopefully I’ll keep it moving in a direction that surprises people.”

In a one-woman show, Comer plays a barrister specialising in defending people accused of sexual assault, who questions the system after being date-raped.

She said in her acceptance speech: “To any kids who haven’t been to drama school, who can’t afford to go, have been rejected – don’t let anyone tell you it’s impossible.”

The actress told the BBC afterwards she was “actually quite embarrassed” she had not “questioned” how the legal system operates before.

Comer researched the role by sitting in on cases at the Old Bailey, and speaking to barristers, judges and police offers who were “very honest” about how they had to “put aside their own feelings as a woman, to commit to the job that they do”.

Beverley Knight did two performances during the ceremony – one for Sylvia, and the other for Sister Act – and said as she accepted her award: “Just over 100 years ago, Emmeline Pankhurst stood on this stage and said,’ I incite this meeting to rebellion’.

“She told each of the women in the room, ‘be militant in your own way’. The next year they banned the women’s Social and Political Union.

“One hundred later we’re stood on this stage – we have reclaimed the power for those women.”

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Totoro, based on the Studio Ghibli classic animation and staged at the Barbican, is about sisters Satsuki and Mei, whose mother is ill in rural Japan.

Its playwright Tom Morton-Smith dedicated their win to his stillborn daughter, saying his wife had been pregnant when he wrote the show.

In a heartfelt speech, he said he wrote Totoro with the joy and expectation of being a new parent but, after his daughter’s death, he wanted to keep her memory alive when people watched the play.

Chris Bush, the writer of Standing at the Sky’s Edge, set in a council estate in Sheffield, thanked the city that inspired him, and called for art to be “available and accessible to every single person who wants to see it”.

The show also won best original score or new orchestrations for Richard Hawley, who has played with Pulp and the Arctic Monkeys, and Tom Deering.

Hawley paid tribute to Pulp’s bass player Steve Mackie, his “fallen comrade” who died last month aged 56.

Sir Derek Jacobi was given the lifetime achievement award, and joked that it would be difficult to talk as he was “already crying”.

Dame Arlene Phillips was given a special award, and the show ended with a performance from Grease The Musical, which she choreographed.

Here are the winners in full: