Olivier awards 2025: Giant, Benjamin Button and Fiddler on the Roof triumph
The play Giant, which portrays children's author Roald Dahl amid an outcry about his antisemitism, has triumphed at the Olivier awards on a star-studded night at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
US star John Lithgow took home the best actor prize for his performance as Dahl, Elliot Levey won best supporting actor (for playing publisher Tom Maschler) and Mark Rosenblatt received the award for best new play.
Giant is Rosenblatt's debut as a playwright and brought him a double victory at the Critics' Circle theatre awards in March, where he won for most promising playwright and best new play. Giant ran last year at the Royal Court in London and will transfer to the West End later this month, with Lithgow and Levey resuming their roles.
Lithgow thanked the audience for 'welcoming me to England' and said 'it's not always easy when you welcome an American into your midst', highlighting that this moment was 'more complicated than usual' for relations between the US and the UK.
He remembered seeing Laurence Olivier's 'astounding performance' at the Old Vic in the play Dance of Death in the late 1960s. 'I have thought about him and stolen from him in just about every performance I have ever played on stage,' he added.
Giant's tally of three Olivier awards on Sunday night was matched by two musicals: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Fiddler on the Roof.
The former, based on the short story by F Scott Fitzgerald and with music and lyrics by Jethro Compton and Darren Clark, won best new musical, outstanding musical contribution (for Clark and Mark Aspinall's orchestrations and arrangements) and best actor in a musical (John Dagleish as the hero who is born old and grows younger each day). Dagleish, who won an Olivier award in 2015 for portraying Ray Davies in the Kinks musical Sunny Afternoon, said that his late mother had been his 'plus one' on that occasion. He dedicated the award to her and said that 'she would have loved' The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Previously staged at the fringe venue Southwark Playhouse in 2019, it is now running in the West End's Ambassadors theatre which recently opened its own on-site custom-built pub, the Pickled Crab, named after a Cornish watering hole in the musical.
Fiddler on the Roof, which received a five-star Guardian review at Regent's Park Open Air theatre and is transferring to the Barbican next month, had received a total of 13 Olivier nominations, equalling a record set by the musical Hamilton in 2018.
The classic musical – composed by Jerry Bock, with lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and book by Joseph Stein – won nine Tony awards in 1965 for its original Broadway production. Director Jordan Fein's new production won Oliviers for best musical revival, best set design (Tom Scutt) and best sound design (Nick Lidster).
The ceremony, which celebrates the cream of London theatre, was hosted by the actors Beverley Knight, a winner at the 2023 awards, and Billy Porter, who is starring as the Emcee in Cabaret. It opened with Knight and Porter performing Luck Be a Lady from the musical Guys and Dolls.
Romola Garai achieved the unusual feat of beating herself to win the award for best actress in a supporting role. She had been nominated twice in that category, recognising her performances in Giant and The Years.
The latter brought her victory. Based on Nobel prize-winner Annie Ernaux's memoir, The Years (at the Almeida theatre) also received the best director prize, with Norwegian theatre-maker Eline Arbo becoming the sixth woman to win that award at the Oliviers.
Garai said The Years had been the 'greatest privilege of my life' and thanked 'my family of Annies' [all the cast share the main role of Annie as well as playing supporting characters]. She called Arbo a 'genius' who 'put all women's life on stage'. Garai also thanked her husband for his support while she took on the two productions.
Arbo previously directed The Years for Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, the world-renowned company which also staged Robert Icke's modern-day version of Sophocles's Oedipus several years ago.
Oedipus, which Icke directed with a new West End cast, won best revival and best actress for Lesley Manville as Jocasta.
Icke praised his '24-carat team' including the producer Sonia Friedman, who he said the industry was 'lucky to have'. (Garai, too, thanked Friedman, who produced The Years.) The experience of making Oedipus had been joyous for the ensemble, added Icke, who jokingly observed 'incest really brings people together'. Manville noted Icke's 'care and precision' as a director in her speech.
The award for best actress in a musical went to Imelda Staunton for her roof-raising turn in Hello, Dolly! at the Palladium. It was Staunton's 14th nomination and fifth win at the Oliviers. The most-lauded individual in Olivier awards history is lighting designer Paule Constable, who has received 17 nominations, and won her sixth award for Oliver! (shared with Ben Jacobs). Constable announced her retirement from theatre earlier this year.
The prize for best theatre choreographer went to Christopher Wheeldon for the Michael Jackson bio-drama MJ the Musical, best costume design went to Gabriella Slade for the colourful rollerskating trains in Starlight Express, and Maimuna Memon took the award for best actress in a supporting role in a musical for Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.
Layton Williams, meanwhile, became the first Olivier winner in history to be recognised for portraying an iceberg (he took best supporting actor in a musical for the zany Titanique). Mark-Anthony Turnage's Festen at the Royal Opera House won two prizes: best new opera production and outstanding achievement in opera (for tenor Allan Clayton).
The National Theatre, the Old Vic and the Coliseum were among the major venues whose shows' nominations did not result in a win, although Rufus Norris received a special award for his 10-year tenure as director of the National.
Established in 1976, the Olivier awards are overseen by the Society of London Theatre. The winners are chosen by a team of industry figures, stage luminaries and theatre-loving members of the public.
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