Patsy Ferran has been named best actress at the Critics’ Circle theatre awards for her performance as A Streetcar Named Desire’s Blanche Dubois – a role that she took over as an 11th-hour replacement.
Lydia Wilson had been cast in the production at the Almeida theatre in London in 2022 but when she withdrew for health reasons, Ferran was parachuted in with just days to prepare. The play, starring Paul Mescal as Stanley and Anjana Vasan as Stella, has transferred to the West End where it runs until May. Ferran was nominated for best actress at the Olivier awards, where Rebecca Frecknall’s production of the Tennessee Williams classic was named best revival earlier this month.
Another Williams revival, The Glass Menagerie directed by Jeremy Herrin at the Duke of York’s theatre, brought Lizzie Annis the Critics’ Circle award for most promising newcomer. Annis made her West End debut in the role of Laura Wingfield in the production which starred Amy Adams as Laura’s mother. Annis, who has cerebral palsy, graduated from the Oxford School of Drama in 2020 and stars in Netflix’s The Witcher: Blood Origin. Arthur Hughes, the first disabled actor to play Richard III for the Royal Shakespeare Company, won the prize for best Shakespearean performance. It is the first time that two of the awards’ acting prizes have been won by performers with disabilities.
The RSC scored another victory with the award for best designer going to Tom Pye for My Neighbour Totoro, adapted from the Studio Ghibli film. That production, which won six Olivier awards, will return to the Barbican in November.
Giles Terera was named best actor for not one but two performances at the National Theatre: in the title role of Clint Dyer’s production of Othello and in Lynette Linton’s revival of Blues for an Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleage. Linton won the best director prize for that show. Red Pitch at the Bush theatre, where Linton is artistic director, brought Tyrell Williams the award for most promising playwright.
Oklahoma! – which transferred to the West End after a run at the Young Vic – was named best musical. The Almeida had another success with the oligarchs drama Patriots by Peter Morgan, which won the Michael Billington award for best new play. That award was renamed in honour of the Guardian’s former chief theatre critic when he stepped down from the role at the end of 2019.
The Critics’ Circle also announced that it will now incorporate the Empty Space Peter Brook award, which ran independently from 1989-2017, as one of its categories in honour of the director who died in 2022. This year’s recipient is the New Diorama theatre in London.
