Rebecca Hall with Brenda Blethy at WOS Awards party
Tweet

Rebecca Hall & Tempest Two Win Charleson Awards

Rebecca Hall, daughter of director Peter Hall, has won first prize in this year's 13th annual Ian Charleson Awards, which are presented for outstanding performances by young actors in classical roles.

Hall was awarded for her performance as Vivie Warren in her father's centennial production of George Bernard Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession, in which she made her professional debut opposite Brenda Blethyn in the title role. Rebecca Hall was also nominated for a Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers' Choice Award for Best Newcomer for the role (pictured at the nominations party with Blethyn - See News, 29 Nov 2002). She'll be seen in another classical role this August in Bath, playing Rosalind in her father's first-ever mounting of As You Like It.

The Ian Charleson other main prizes both went to actors from Michael Grandage's Sheffield Crucible production of Shakespeare's The Tempest, which starred Derek Jacobi and transferred to the West End's Old Vic for a limited run earlier this year.

Second prize went to Daniel Evans - a former Whatsonstage.com and Olivier Best Actor in a Musical award winner for Grandage's Merrily We Roll Along at the Donmar - who was recognised for English Touring Theatre's revival of Ibsen's Ghosts as well as his Ariel in The Tempest. Iain Robertson, who played the drunkard Trinculo in the Shakespeare production, won third prize.

Ian Charleson commendations were also handed out to Claire Price for the same Sheffield Crucible production; Nonso Anonzie and Ryan Kiggell for the RSC Academy's King Lear; Nancy Carroll for King Lear at the Almeida Theatre; Justin Avoth for A Midsummer Night's Dream at Manchester's Royal Exchange; Lucy Black for Twelfth Night at Bristol's Tobacco Factory; Naomi Frederick for Three Sisters at Nuffield Theatre in Southampton; Dan Fredenburgh for the RSC and Lyric Hammersmith co-production of The Prince of Homburg; Kanawa Kirimi for the RSC's Pericles; and Sam Troughton for Tartuffe at the National.

The Ian Charleson Award honours the late actor, a veteran of the RSC who found fame on screen in Chariots of Fire and who died from Aids in 1990 at the age of 40. Previous winners of the awards include Alexandra Gilbreath, Claudie Blakley, Dominic West, Emma Fielding, Lucy Whybrow, Rupert Penry-Jones, Toby Stephens and Tom Hollander.

- by Terri Paddock

Related Content