I was lucky enough to catch some of the eventual Olivier Award 2024 winners when I was in London last year (and I’m booked in to see more when I head there in a few weeks, including Stranger Things: The First Shadow and The Picture of Dorian Gray (with Sarah Snook this time)). I hoping to get to Broadway to catch Jamie Lloyd’s Sunset Boulevard when it transfers, but we’ll see how the bank account is looking later in the year. And thank god for NT Live broadcasts of shows like Vanya and Dear England – both deserving winners. You might even be able to catch an encore NT Live screening of The Motive and The Cue if you’re lucky.
I’m putting some of my mini reviews of the winners here so they’re in the one place. These were all written in 2023.
Operation Mincemeat (Fortune Theatre) ★★★★★
Olivier Award 2024 Winner: Mastercard Best New Musical and Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical: Jak Malone
Book, Music & Lyrics by David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson & Zoë Roberts. Fortune Theatre.
Everyone I know has been telling me “you have to see Operation Mincemeat, it’s amazing” but the thought of spending West End prices on a show at the Fortune Theatre (a pokey little theatre that housed The Woman in Black for over 20 years) felt ridiculous, but I bit the bullet after discovering that some not-theatre-obsessed friends had already seen it multiple times and raved.
And my god – this is the kind of show we need more of in Australia! Funny, heartfelt, scrappy, this is the little show that could… and the last time I thought that about a musical it was an Edinburgh fringe hit about the six wives of Henry VII! Operation Mincemeat is the real deal, a comedy musical about the infamous WWII operation when the British used a corpse to get false invasion plans to the Germans as a misdirection.
What Operation Mincemeat does really well is hit you high with laughs while hitting you low with big emotions. It doesn’t gloss over the sexism, elitism and nepotism of the age, or the fact that a man’s corpse was used in a callous fashion. It feels like The Play That Goes Wrong meets The Producers, and I loved every second of it.
When Winston Went to War with the Wireless (Donmar) ★★★
Olivier Award 2024 Winner: Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Haydn Gwynne
Written by Jack Thorne. Donmar Warehouse.
Writer Jack Thorne is prolific. Across stage and screen his name is everywhere. From plays like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Let the Right One In, TV shows like Skins, Shameless and His Dark Materials, and Netflix’s Enola Holmes films, he is kind of everywhere. His new play, When Winston Went to War with the Wireless, is a love letter to the BBC.
Set during the 1926 General Strikes in the United Kingdom it tells of the media war between the only two news sources not on strike, a government run newspaper The British Gazette (edited by then Chancellor Winston Churchill) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (run by closeted gay man John Reith).
I just wanted a bit more from this one. It had all the right things in the right places but I was unmoved by it all. Interestingly there is an element of live radio-play on stage, with live foley sound effects being produced from the back of the stage, which is a great idea never fully realised. The ever excellent Haydn Gwynne stole the show for me. Playing multiple smaller roles she’s just a stage gem.
It’s a great set up for the characters and there is some interesting drama, but in the end I just wondered what point Thorne was trying to make. Admittedly, seeing it the same day as I saw A Little Life meant I was rather tired, so maybe it’s just me.
The Motive and the Cue (National Theatre) ★★★★★
Olivier Award 2024 Winner: Best Actor: Mark Gatiss.
Written by Jack Thorne. National Theatre.
Here we have a new play, directed by Sam Mendes, about the creation of Richard Burton’s record breaking production of Hamlet on Broadway. This show clearly ambition and the scope to be massive, this is theatre aimed at taking on Broadway!
Sir John Gielgud (Mark Gatiss, in possibly a career best performance) has been commissioned to direct a new production of Hamlet starring Richard Burton (Johnny Flynn) but this clash of styles and cultures threatens to push the whole thing off the rails. Will this be the failure that ends both careers?
The Broadway transfer feels almost inevitable. The story is the perfect trans-Atlantic blend – a play that is all about the love of theatre, featuring American icons in the newly wed Burton and Elizabeth Taylor (a pitch-perfect Tuppence Middleton) and a British legend in Gielgud. Staged in a traditional proscenium arch makes it an easily replicated production (the iris-like safety curtain of the National’s Lyttleton theatre gives it a cinematic feel as well). The whole thing is slick, funny and poignant. Ryan Murphy will make it into a Netflix series eventually.
While I felt Thorne’s When Winston Went to War with the Wireless was lacking in heart, The Motive & the Cue has no such problem, it is brimming with emotion. The air of insecurity reeks from Burton’s desperation to succeed (the motivation of which drives the story), and Gielgud’s resignation to his career winding down – these are two men struggling with their inner lives as well as their outer persona’s.
A play about plays and celebrity and art – this could not be more my “thing” if it tried.
Guys & Dolls (Bridge Theatre) ★★★★★
Olivier Award 2024 Winner: Gillian Lynne Award for Best Theatre Choreographer: Arlene Phillips with James Cousins
Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. Bridge Theatre.
This was one of the shows I pre booked well in advance as I’d heard nothing but rave reviews from friends and critics alike. Nicholas Hytner presents this well-worn, much loved musical in “promenade”, meaning the stalls have been removed and a large proportion of the audience stands in the pit with the performers (with the staging rising out of the ground so those in the seats around the edges can see them). It’s dynamic and full of carefully choreographed chaos. But it’s not just the technical details that got me all hot under the collar, it’s the four excellent leads. Marisha Wallace, Celinde Schoenmaker, Daniel Mays and Andrew Richarson. And to up the ante, the Act One ending scene in Havana is now staged in a gay bar, with Sister Sarah drunkening attacking the men dancing with Skye. This managed to be both classic and incredibly fresh at the same time.
Cultural Binge 
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