From the Fire Leads 2011 MTM Award Nominations
Shortlists are today (16 August 2011) announced for the 2011 Musical Theatre Matters: UK Awards. Now in their fifth year, the awards are the only prize-giving specially dedicated to the musical genre at the Edinburgh Fringe.
For the third consecutive year Whatsonstage.com are proud to be media partners of the MTM: UK Awards.
The Awards comprise five key categories: Best New Musical, Best Musical Production, Best Book, Best Music and Best Lyrics.
During the first two weeks of the festival, each show was visited twice by a team of assessors. Over the next week, the panel of judges – including Whatsonstage.com deputy editor Andrew Girvan – will pay each show a final visit before making their decision.
This year 12 musicals have made it through to the shortlist. Leading the field with a nomination in each of the categories is From the Fire by Tony-nominated composer, Elizabeth Swados staged at Zoo Roxy by Triangle Productions. The production is billed as a “haunting dramatisation” of the uprising of 20,000 young women in New York City and the infamous Triangle Factory Fire of 1911.
Also leading the nominations with nods in four categories is Westminster Theatre Company’s production of Hamlet House of Horror at The Playhouse at Hawke and Hunter Green Room. Marrying music, marriage, misogyny, murder the piece is billed as “Shakespeare in vaudeville style” with a previous iteration of the work having appeared at the Old Red Lion in Islington.
Wasted Love, One Academy Productions’ musical about the unpredictable route from heartbreak to healing in a relationship shared by members of the Wasted Love support group, is also nominated in four categories. The production, presented by the RSAMD’s musical theatre students, is a new musical from the Kielty Brothers, creators of highland musical The Sundowe. It is presented in rep at C venues with the company’s Show Choir the Musical.
Other nominees include David Greig‘s indie comedy-musical The Monster in the Hall at the Traverse Theatre; The Prodigals which stars X Factors and Les Miserables‘ Lucie Jones; Kooman & Dimond’s romantic piece Homemade Fusion; and Scene of the Titans, the true story of Northern Ireland’s first gay-friendly rugby team.
Winners for all MTM: UK Awards will be announced at a gala ceremony on Wednesday 24 August 2011.
The full list of nominees for the 2011 MTM: UK Awards are:
Best Production
Best Book
Best Music
Best Lyrics
Best New Musical
log on to Whatsonstage.com/Edinburgh!
