Theatre News

Shayne Ward, Richard Fleeshman & Backbeat Launch WOS Awards

Shayne Ward, Richard Fleeshman and “the Beatles” will help kick things off in style in the 2012 Whatsonstage.com Awards, by singing at the Launch Party, when full shortlists are announced and final voting opened, on Friday 2 December 2011 at Café de Paris, in the heart of the West End.

Ward, Fleeshman and the Fab Four (or, in this case Five: Nick Blood, Andrew Knott, Daniel Healy, Will Payne and Oliver Bennett) will perform numbers from their respective hit shows – Rock of Ages at the Shaftesbury Theatre, Ghost the Musical at the Piccadilly Theatre and Backbeat at the Duke of York’s Theatre. All three shows opened during the past six months and, if their fans have anything to do with this month’s nominations phase (which, of course, they do), will doubtless figure in the shortlists announced on the day.



Top row, L-R: Will Payne, Daniel Healy, Nick Blood & Andrew Knott in Backbeat. Second row: Malcolm Sinclair, Nigel Lindsay as Shrek, Nigel Lindsay, Meera Syal & Jemima Rooper. Bottom row: Amy Pemberton & Shayne Ward in Rock of Ages, Richard Fleeshman & Caissie Levy in Ghost. Photographer credits: Dan Wooller, Helen Maybanks, Tristram Kenton, Sean Ebsworth Barnes.

To help us read the shortlists, we’ll be joined by three big names from this past year’s Whatsonstage.com Awards: Meera Syal, who won Best Solo Performance for Shirley Valentine and returns to the stage for the RSC in next year’s World Shakespeare Festival; Nigel Lindsay, who scooped Best Actor in a Play for Broken Glass and is now greening up at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in screen-to-stage Broadway blockbuster Shrek The Musical; and Jemima Rooper, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Play for All My Sons and has just returned to the West End opposite James Corden in One Man, Two Guvnors.

Other special guests will include actor (and another former nominee) Malcolm Sinclair, president of Equity, a sponsor of the Awards, and West End producer Joseph Smith, the new chief executive of this year’s adopted charity Stage One, which is dedicated to developing the producers of the future.

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Get involved, get invited – Thanks to our sponsors

The Launch Party is an industry-only, by-invitation event. However, a limited number of members of the public can attend by becoming Theatregoer Sponsors. Private sponsorship packages – priced at £550 + VAT (or £525 for Theatre Club Members) – include two invites to the star-studded launch party at Café de Paris as well as VIP tickets and post-show party passes to the Winners’ Concert, produced by Stuart Piper and Jason Haigh-Ellery on behalf of Whatsonstage.com, at the West End’s Prince of Wales Theatre on 19 February.

** FOR MORE INFO & TO BECOME A THEATREGOER SPONSOR, CLICK HERE! **

Our corporate sponsors for the 2012 Awards include Radisson Edwardian, Asahi, AKA, Cameron Mackintosh Ltd, Dewynters, EMG, Equity, Jo Hutchison International, Luckings, Nick Hern Books, Really Useful Group, Samuel French Ltd, Seatlive.com, See Tickets, Theatre Tokens and Whitelight, while our industry partners include Dress Circle, Last Minute Theatre Tickets, Onstage, M is for, Theatermania.com and Youth Music Theatre. We thank each of them for their generous support.

** TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT OUR SPONSORS, CLICK HERE, OR TO ENQUIRE ABOUT PUTTING YOUR COMPANY NAME ON THE SPONSORS’ LIST, CLICK HERE.**