In it for the long haul….

In the inaugural awards in 1955, too, they had a category, “Most Controversial Play”, that was won by Waiting for Godot; and yesterday, the original director of that production Sir Peter Hall was in attendance. But also the star of the West End’s most recent outing of the play, Ian McKellen, was duly presented with a special award for his contribution to British Theatre (and revealed that he hasn’t finished with the play yet: it will return in the New Year to the Haymarket, with Roger Rees stepping into Patrick Stewart’s shoes as Vladimir).

These awards, of course, make their own unique contribution to British theatre, not least in the roll-call of recognising talent early on: it was in the second year of the awards that they introduced a category for Most Promising Playwright - won that year by John Osborne, then the year after by Robert Bolt, and over next few years, by Peter Shaffer, John Arden, Arnold Wesker, JP Donleavy, David Rudkin, James Saunders and Charles Wood. Of course, there are also names, and plays, that mostly vanished from trace. (One or two, of course, periodically make a reappearance: the 1988 winner, Timberlake Wertenbaker, in fact returned just last night to the Arcola Theatre with a new play The Line, but none of her subsequent plays made the impact that she achieved with the one that won her the award in the first place, Our Country’s Good, and The Line, I’m afraid, is hardly like to break the pattern).

A decade ago, the Standard also introduced a second newcomer award for non-playwrights, won that year by Eve Best, and in subsequent years by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rufus Norris, Tom Hardy, Eddie Redmayne, Andrew Garfield, Stephen Wight and Ella Smith: they’ve not chosen a duff name yet. Norris is now one of our best directors; Redmayne is about to star in Red at the Donmar Warehouse, and Wight has just opened in The Habit of Art at the National, while Ejiofor, Hardy and Garfield have all been seen in major film releases this year. But yesterday the judges made a perverse decision and gave the honour in the same category to Lenny Henry. On the one hand, as the Standard’s own editorial yesterday trumpeted, “he goes to show that it’s never too late to show thespian genius”; and Henry himself remarked, in collecting his award, that at 51 he “must be oldest newcomer there has ever been - which means there is hope for Bruce Forsyth’s King Lear”. (What with Abi Titmuss currently playing Lady Macbeth on the road, I guess nothing should be ruled out).

His performance was indeed a remarkable achievement - as Paul Taylor so eloquently put it in his review in the Independent, the production “has a peculiar impact that derives both from our knowing that the well-loved Henry is a Shakespeare novice and from his extraordinary feat in persuading us to forget that fact. For those of us barricaded in our trite little comfort zones, his is a morally inspiring achievement.”

But though a newcomer to Shakespeare, Henry is no newcomer to live performance - it’s what he has been doing for more than 30 years now. And to give it the award to him instead of, say, the amazing Tom Sturridge for Punk Rock is to have missed the opportunity to applaud the arrival of a genuinely amazing new stage actor.

I was also more than a little disappointed that the Open Air Theatre’s production of the charming, sweetly-done Hello, Dolly! won out over the more gritty claims of Spring Awakening for Best Musical, but then conservatism obviously sometimes wins out, particularly when it comes to musicals. What hope is there is for daring, original work, though, when a 1964 Broadway musical can stake a claim to being the best musical of 2009? We are sounding the death knell for the future of musicals this way.

The Standard seems to have confined their sense of adventure to the design category, awarding the prize to Mamoru Iriguchi for Cardboard Citizens’ production of Mincemeat that took place beyond a conventional theatre setting. As Henry Hitchings, the Standard’s theatre critic, put it in a press statement, “It recognises the excitement that site-sensitive productions can deliver. Moreover, this promenade piece was put on by Cardboard Citizens, a company which provides more than 4,500 hours of paid employment per year to homeless people and those recently homeless. It’s good to be able to pay tribute to their work.”

Indeed, even if I can’t personally speak up for it, since I managed to miss it. There could, however, be no arguing with the award of Best Actor to Mark Rylance for Jerusalem - not even from Rylance himself, who just two years ago said in an interview “I don’t receive awards any more. I don’t think they’re a very good thing in the theatre. I think it’s a terrible thing that there aren’t awards for ensemble acting because what I like is what happens between actors. For example, in Boeing-Boeing, what happens between Roger and Frankie and I is something larger than either of us and yet awards only recognise an individual and I think it’s very distracting and to do with the vanity of critics and individuals. I think there should be more awards for whole companies, or perhaps scenes in shows, we could say this scene worked particularly well. But we have to recognise it is the effort of more than one person who made that scene or show good.”

Six years ago, when he collected an award from the Critics’ Circle for Best Shakepsearean Peformance for playing Olivia in Twelfth Night at the Globe, he brought the entire company with him, and he said he’d only come to the ceremony because he’d been led to believe that the honour was for the production rather than his personal performance. As Whatsonstage.com reported him saying at the time, “I will not be separated out,” before claiming, “I will not appear again for any future awards until there is an award that recognises the ensemble.”

Obviously he has had a re-think since, and turned up yesterday on his own behalf. And he commented, “I’m nearly 50 now, it’s extraordinary to be part of this community”, as he had been for some thirty years now. And he also railed against the claims that some practitioners make that younger actors are pursuing fame over their craft, pointing out that “These young actors [from the Jerusalem ensemble] were an inspiration to me. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with young actors, I think they’re fine and the future’s good.”