Life of Pi and Cabaret Were Big Winners at Oliver Awards

It was a night of delight for the theatre at the Royal Albert Hall as the staging industry celebrated the year when performances resumed after the lockdown. Cabaret stars Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley won the Acting Awards and the show was named the Best Musical Revival.

Based on the Booker Prize-winning novel, Life of Pi has won the Best New Play and several technical awards. Hyrum Abeysekera, the leading actor in the play, also won the Best Actor Award, and the seven actors who play the tiger shared the Best Supporting Actor Award.

The cabaret has won seven of the 11 nominated awards, including all four musical actor awards for Redmayne, Buckley, Elliot Levey, and Liza Sadovy.

Rebecca Frecknall became additionally named a high-quality director, and she committed the prize to her overdue father, who she defined had performed Emcee as a scholar in 1975.

The ceremony also paid tribute to all who died in the past two years, including actors Christopher Plummer, Dame Barbara Windsor, Paul Ritter, Jeffrey Palmer, Sir Antony Sher, Una Stubbs, Des O'Connor, and composer Stephen Sondheim.