My Neighbour Totoro dominates Britain’s Olivier Award nominations

LONDON – A stage adaptation of My Neighbour Totoro, the 1988 animated Japanese children’s movie filled with fantastical creatures, emerged on Tuesday as the front runner for this year’s Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tony Awards.

The show, which ran at the Barbican Theatre in London and included giant puppets, secured nine nominations – more than any other play. Those included nods for Best Comedy, Best Director for Phelim McDermott and Best Actress for Mei Mac as a girl who discovers a magical world near her home.

The play’s high number of nominations was perhaps unsurprising, given that My Neighbour Totoro received rave reviews when it opened in 2022.

Theatre critic Matt Wolf, writing in The New York Times, said the play’s puppets were “the most endearing sight on the London stage” at the time. Theatre critic Sarah Hemming in The Financial Times said the Royal Shakespeare Company production was “a tender, remarkably beautiful family show that extols kindness”.

Although Totoro secured the most nominations, it did not get a nod for Best New Play. Instead, four more grown-up dramas will compete for that award.

Those include Prima Facie at the Harold Pinter Theatre, a Broadway-bound one-woman show about sexual assault that stars English actress Jodie Comer; Patriots at the Almeida Theatre, a retelling of President Vladimir Putin’s rise in Russia; and American playwright Aaron Sorkin’s To Kill A Mockingbird adaptation at the Gielgud Theatre.

Those shows will compete with For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy, a play at the Royal Court in London about six young black men who meet for group therapy.

Comer’s performance in Prima Facie struck a chord with West End audiences and she was nominated for Best Actress. She is up for that honour against Mac of My Neighbour Totoro, as well as Patsy Ferran for A Streetcar Named Desire at the Almeida, Janet McTeer for Phaedra at the National Theatre, and Nicola Walker for The Corn Is Green, also at the National.

Before Tuesday’s announcement, many British theatre critics had expected actor Emma Corrin to receive a nomination for Orlando, a play based on English writer Virginia Woolf’s gender-fluid novel, at the Garrick Theatre.

That would have likely caused a media stir as Corrin, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, has over the past year repeatedly urged awards show organisers to make their acting categories gender-neutral. In 2022, Corrin told the BBC that it was “difficult for me” to be non-binary and nominated in female acting categories.

Ms Emma De Souza, a spokesman for the Society of London Theatre, the awards organisers, said Corrin was considered in the Best Actress category but did not make the cut.

“It was an incredibly competitive year,” Ms De Souza added.

The Best Actor award is set to be equally hard fought.

Among the nominees are rising Irish star Paul Mescal for A Streetcar Named Desire, Rafe Spall for To Kill A Mockingbird and David Tennant for Good. They will compete against Tom Hollander for his role as an oligarch in Patriots and Giles Terera, who starred in Blues For An Alabama Sky at the National Theatre.

In the musical categories, the nominations are led by Standing At The Sky’s Edge, also at the National.

The show, about the residents of a housing complex in the northern England city of Sheffield, secured eight nominations, including best new musical. It will compete for that award with The Band’s Visit at the Donmar Warehouse and Sylvia – a hip-hop musical based on the life of suffragist Sylvia Pankhurst – at the Old Vic.

Those three titles will face stiff competition from Tammy Faye, a high-profile production at the Almeida Theatre that told the story of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker using new music by British singer Elton John.

The winners of this year’s Olivier Awards will be announced in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London on April 2. NYTIMES