Frost, Black & Overwhelming Get South Bank NodsDate: 5 January 2007
The full list of nominations has been announced today for the eleventh annual South Bank Show Awards, which honours the UK’s creative talent across a wide range of the arts.
In the main Theatre category, the Donmar Warehouse’s premiere production of Frost/Nixon, now at the West End’s Gielgud Theatre ahead of its Broadway transfer in March, battles it out against two other new plays: Gregory Burke’s Black Watch and JT Roger’s The Overwhelming.
Premiered at a Traverse Theatre offshoot at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, where it won a host of awards, Black Watch, an unauthorised biography of the legendary Scottish military troop of the title, was the first big hit for the fledgling National Theatre of Scotland. A UK tour and London transfer is planned for later this year (See News, 12 Dec 2006).
The Overhwelming, set on the eve of the genocide in Rwanda, premiered at the National’s Cottesloe Theatre in May prior to an extensive regional tour this past autumn, care of Out of Joint. It marked the UK debut for young American playwright JT Rogers.
There’s a second South Bank nod for Frost/Nixon’s author Peter Morgan, who crossed over from screen to stage with the play based on the bruising 1977 TV interviews between David Frost and former US president Richard Nixon. His feature The Queen is in the running in the Film category.
Elsewhere, as previously announced (See News, 19 Dec 2006), The Sound of Music’s Connie Fisher has been nominated for the South Bank’s Breakthrough Award, run in conjunction with The Times newspaper and specifically recognising rising British talent.
Fisher, Frost/Nixon, Black Watch and The Overhwelming have all also been nominated for various prizes in this year’s Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers’ Choice Awards, decided here by the theatregoing public (click here to vote now!).
- by Terri Paddock
