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New York Times
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
John Lithgow's ‘Giant' Is Among the Big Winners at the Olivier Awards
'Giant,' a play about Roald Dahl's antisemitism starring John Lithgow as the truculent children's author, was one of the big winners at this year's Olivier Awards, Britain's equivalent of the Tonys. The play, which was staged at the Royal Court last year and is transferring to the West End on April 26, took home three awards at Sunday's ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London: best actor, for Lithgow; best supporting actor for Elliot Levey as a publisher trying to get Dahl to apologize for his statements about Jews; and the coveted best new play award. For that final prize, 'Giant' bested four other titles, including 'The Years,' an acclaimed staging of a Frenchwoman's life (featuring a back-street abortion and late-in-life affair) that is running at the Harold Pinter Theater until April 19. The success for 'Giant' was perhaps unsurprising given how much critics praised its opening run. Clive Davis, in The Times of London, said the 'subtle, intelligent and stylishly crafted' drama, written by Mark Rosenblatt and directed by Nicholas Hytner, 'deserves to transfer to a bigger stage.' (Lithgow has said in interviews that he wants to take the play to Broadway.) Houman Barekat in a review for The New York Times said that Lithgow was 'superb as the beleaguered but unrepentant writer, blending affable, avuncular esprit with scowling, cranky prickliness and nonchalant cruelty. Two other productions also won three awards: A revival of 'Fiddler on the Roof,' the much-loved 1964 musical, which ran at the Regent's Park Open Air Theater last year; and 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,' a folk-rock adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald story about a man who ages in reverse. 'Fiddler on the Roof,' which is transferring to London's Barbican in May, won the best musical revival prize among other awards. Its competitors were a production of 'Hello, Dolly!' that ran at the London Palladium; and ongoing revivals of 'Starlight Express' at the Troubadour Wembley Park Theater and 'Oliver!' at the Gielgud Theater. 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,' which is playing at the Ambassadors Theater, took home the best new musical award, as well as the best actor in a musical for its lead, John Dagleish, and the outstanding musical contribution prize. The night's other major prizes went to a host of productions. The best director award, which pits the most-talked-about plays and musicals against each other, went to Eline Arbo for the 'The Years' — a play that has grabbed attention in London for more than the action onstage: Sonia Friedman, the show's producer, said that at almost every performance, an audience member has fainted during the abortion scene. The best actress in a musical prize went to Imelda Staunton in the title role of 'Hello, Dolly!', while the best actress in a play award went to Lesley Manville for her Jocasta in Robert Icke's 'Oedipus,' which ran at Wyndham's Theater. The best new comedy or entertainment award went to a West End version of 'Titanique,' an absurd retelling of James Cameron's 'Titanic' movie featuring Celine Dion songs that had its New York premiere in 2022.
New York Times
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
An Abortion Scene Gets Theater Audiences Talking, and Fainting
About 40 minutes into a recent performance of 'The Years' in London, Stephanie Schwartz suddenly felt ill and had to put her head between her legs. Onstage at the Harold Pinter Theater, the actress Romola Garai was holding two knitting needles while portraying a young Frenchwoman trying to give herself an abortion. The scene was set in 1964, a time when medical abortions were illegal in France, and Garai's character wasn't ready for motherhood. Schwartz, 39, said she had started feeling faint as Garai's character, Annie, described her attempt to carry out the procedure in stark, if brief, detail. But then, Schwartz recalled, there was a commotion in the balcony above. An audience member had actually passed out. Since opening last summer for a short run at the Almeida Theater, then again last month on the West End, 'The Years' has been the talk of London's theaterland. That has as much to do with audience reactions to the six-minute abortion scene as the near-universal critical acclaim that the production and its five actresses received for their powerful portrayal of one woman's life. While fainting theatergoers are nothing new — several passed out over the onstage torture in Sarah Kane's 'Cleansed' at the National Theater almost a decade ago — the sheer number keeling over at 'The Years' stands out. Sonia Friedman, the show's producer, said that at least one person has fainted at every performance despite a warning to ticketholders. Friedman said that she realized the scene's power, especially at a time when many women, particularly in the United States, fear a rollback of reproductive rights. After failing to carry out the home abortion, Annie describes her visit to a backstreet clinic, then, later, miscarrying the fetus at home. Still, Friedman said she worried that the scene had overtaken discussion about a play that portrayed women's lives in all their 'power, pain and joy.' 'What should dominate the discussion,' Friedman said, 'is, 'Why has it taken this long for such a work about women, by women, to be onstage?'' Based on a 2008 autobiographical book of the same title by Annie Ernaux, the 2022 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 'The Years' is an attempt to not just capture a woman's life, but also show France's shift toward sexual liberation and consumerism. Eline Arbo, the play's director, said that, when she read the book, she immediately wanted to bring its blend of emotional, political and social history to the stage, even if Ernaux's writing contained no dialogue. 'Everybody thought I was crazy,' Arbo said. She didn't think twice about including the abortion scene. It was such a key moment in Ernaux's life, Arbo said (Ernaux almost bled to death), adding that it was vital to remind audiences of the importance of legal abortion. Garai said she performed the abortion scene when she auditioned for the show, and had felt it was a 'great, accurate depiction' of something that many women experienced when abortion was illegal. 'It's their bodies, their histories,' Garai said. During rehearsals, Garai recalled Arbo mentioning that a handful of audience members had fainted when the director staged the show in the Netherlands. But Garai said she had dismissed the possibility of similar reactions in London. British theatergoers, Garai recalled thinking, were used to sitting through bloody productions of Shakespeare. Yet, two days after the play opened at the Almeida Theater, the stage manager rushed onstage mid-performance and stopped the show. Someone had fainted. The cast feared they had traumatized a woman who had experienced an abortion, but it soon became clear there was no pattern: Men were fainting, as well as women. Perhaps the summer heat was a contributing factor? But now that the play was running on the West End, during a bitterly cold winter, the fainting was 'even worse,' Garai said. (The run concludes April 19.) Arbo said that her best theory for the reactions was that the show's stripped-back style left room for audiences to imagine the abortion themselves, and so increased the scene's intensity. Really, though, she said, she had no idea why West End audiences were fainting. 'Do you have an answer?' she asked. 'I don't!' During a recent performance, the show, meant to run almost two hours without intermission, was stopped twice for about five minutes so that ushers could attend to flustered theatergoers. Other audience members said they had mixed feelings about those interruptions. Mary Tyler, 65, a retired management consultant, sighed when the play was first halted. 'You are joking,' she said. 'That is so rude to the performers.' When the play stopped a second time, Chi Ufodiama, 35, a public relations worker, said she was sympathetic if someone who had experienced abortion was struggling, but she was 'suspicious' that the pauses were a deliberate part of the show. (Garai dismissed that notion: 'Why would we do that?') During each pause, Garai walked to the back of the stage and formed a circle with the other four woman playing Annie at different points in her life: Anjli Mohindra, Harmony Rose-Bremner, Gina McKee and Deborah Findlay. Garai said the cast had decided to remain onstage partly to signal to the audience that the play was about women's communal experience. 'We're all here to tell the rest of this story together,' she said. Once ushers had ensured the audience member was all right (they sometimes provide bottles of water or medical assistance), Garai returned to the front of the stage and continued acting as intensely as before, without missing a word. It was no different than having a director interrupting her mid-rehearsal, Garai said. Within minutes of enduring the abortion, her character had moved on from that moment: She gets married, becomes a mother, and soon the play was racing through a divorce and other scenes that shed light on women's lives. Some were comedic, like a moment when McKee, playing Annie in middle age, attends her first aerobics class. Other scenes were more passionate, including one in which Findlay, portraying Annie in her 50s and 60s, describes an affair with a younger man. For Garai, that May-December romance was as strong a statement as the abortion. Garai said it showed that older women 'not only can desire, but can be objects of desire,' adding she had never seen such a relationship on a London stage before. Even for Schwartz, the audience member who felt she came close to fainting, the play's broader messages struck home. She said certain moments made her ponder what past generations of women lived through, as well as reflect on her own life experiences and those of her friends. The play was 'such a relatable depiction of womanhood,' Schwartz added, and that meant it had to include the abortion scene, too.
