Keeping up standards….

And although presented in the name of the Evening Standard, what is interesting about them is that - apart from the Standard’s own Nicholas de Jongh and Georgina Brown from the Standard’s Associated newspaper stablemate the Mail on Sunday - the awards actually represent a wider constituency of critical opinion beyond that newspaper group, since they are judged by the number one critics, too, of The Observer, Times and Telegraph. They therefore come with the endorsement of expert critical eyes, though of course a necessarily niche one - the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards, by contrast, are decided by votes tabulated from the entire drama section.

Though no single awards ceremony can ever hope to encompass or reward the full range of a year’s work, this year’s winners usefully endorse the high standards that are currently being set by the Donmar Warehouse, whose artistic director Michael Grandage picked up the award for Best Director, and from whose productions of Othello and The Chalk Garden Chiwetel Ejiofor and (jointly) Margaret Tyzack and Penelope Wilton respectively took the top honours for Best Actor and Best Actress. (What a pity, though, as ever that only a limited number of people actually saw any of these performances since they played only in the Donmar’s tiny home theatre, amplifying once again the exclusivity that has always marked it out, though it has now of course since spread its wings to its current West End residency at Wyndham’s).

There will, of course, always be disagreement about who should have been in contention in the first place - the Standard strung out the suspense for this year’s awards by first publishing a “long list” of nominees from whom the short list was finally compiled, and I was particularly mystified not to find Elena Roger on either of them for her performance in the title role of Piaf. And there may well be further scratched heads over the winners, too - the naming of Street Scene, a revival of a rarely-seen 1946 Kurt Weill opera that played for just five performances at the Young Vic in July, as Best Musical may or may not be deserved, but few people, including some of the judges, actually saw it.

But there was also admirable recognition for the turnabout of fortunes that Kevin Spacey has managed to effect at the Old Vic, and saw him receiving a special award. This must have been especially sweet for Spacey: in the wake of the critical and commercial failure of Arthur Miller’s Resurrection Blues just two and a half years ago, Nihcolas de Jongh wrote a piece in the Evening Standard whose introduction had asked, “Is it time for Kevin Spacey to hand over his crown? The Old Vic’s latest show is a flop and there are no new productions to fill the next few months. If the theatre goes dark, its artistic director should resign.”

In a BBC radio interview in the wake of this, Spacey reportedly compared taking advice on how to run a theatre from de Jongh to “taking war strategy from Donald Rumsfeld.”

And Spacey duly held firm to his resolve. He told the New York Times soon after, “There must be an impression that somehow this stuff bothers me, but they’re selling newspapers, and I’m selling theatre seats. I’m having the time of my life. I love the people who work at this place, and the irony is that instead of all this attention having an undermining or a negative effect, it’s galvanizing us”,

It obviously did. As Charles Spencer wrote in yesterday’s Evening Standard in a round-up feature of the judges’ decisions, “A lesser man than Spacey might have quit in the face of so much hostile criticism. After all, he could earn much more in Hollywood with a tenth of the hassle. But it was now that Spacey displayed real character, sticking to his guns, and leading from the front… For bringing new life to the Old Vic with a combination of chutzpah and true grit, Spacey is the worthy winner of the Special Award.”

Spacey was indeed earning money elsewhere on Monday, and accepted his award by video from a film set where he said he was working, he said, “to pay for my theatre habit”. But as Judi Dench commented in the Standard’s report on the awards on Monday, “He’s a totally committed man of the theatre, I think.” And Peter Hall added, “It’s wonderful that he’s here - great actor, great director and, I think, now a great theatre-runner.”

Spacey always said he was in this for the long-term: he told the New York Times in 2006 that he planned to stay in the job for the next ten years, while doing the occasional film as he was on Monday. He said then, “The fact of the matter is that we are getting an enormous amount of attention. Whether that’s positive or not, people are talking about the Old Vic Theatre again with passion and commitment and controversy and debate.” And now they’re talking of it with approval.