Best Actress in a Play
Before this year, Eve Best was one of those names I’d heard a lot, seen a lot whilst peeing at the Almeida but never really engaged with as I’d never seen on her onstage before. How that has changed with the kind of performance as Beatrice that had the entire Globe eating out of her hand. Warm, funny, spiky, romantic, independent and so incredibly open, I can’t imagine there was a person who didn’t fall in love with her as a result.
It takes something to wrest my attention away from as fine a specimen as the beefed-up Jude Law was in Anna Christie, but Ruth Wilson’s titular Anna did just that with a perfectly realised portrayal of a woman caught between the feisty independence she’s needed to survive thus far in a harsh world and the change that comes about as a result of close human contact that opens her up to new possibilities. If not already there, she really is close to being one of the most exceptional actors we have.
7-10
Best Actress in a Musical
I am generally of the opinion that Imelda Staunton can do no wrong, but this was no walk-in victory as it was a tough category. But her Mrs Lovett, soon to make its bow in the West End, really is one of those exceptional performances that will live long in the memory. The comedy in the role suits her strengths well, A Little Priest has never been funnier but having made us pretty fall in love with her, the shift into malevolent darkness then cuts incredibly, terrifyingly deep and is all the more powerfully compelling for it.
Honourable mention: Adrianna Bertola, Josie Griffiths, Cleo Demetriou, Kerry Ingram Eleanor Worthington Cox & Sophia Kiely, Matilda
Shared six ways as incredibly, there are six girls with the enormous, precocious talent to carry off the demanding lead role in Matilda and I don’t think I have heard a bad word about any of them which is some impressive feat. Josie Griffiths in Stratford and Kerry Ingram in London are the two I’ve seen (thus far) and both blew me away with their assured stage presence, their maturity of performance and the all-round talent they possess.
7-10
Labels: Beverley Klein, Eve Best, fosterIANs, Geraldine James, Imelda Staunton, Jemima Rooper, Kerry Ingram, Laura Pitt-Pulford, Lisa Palfrey, Rosie Wyatt, Ruth Wilson, Scarlett Strallen, Siân Brooke