Dundee’s Peer Nabs Four Scottish Theatre Awards

The Tony Awards weren’t the only theatre awards taking place last night (See Today’s Other News). In Glasgow, a ceremony was held to announce the winners of the sixth annual Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland.

Dundee Rep, the only permanent repertory company north of the border, scooped four prizes for its revival of Ibsen’s “famously unstageable” classic Peer Gynt: Best Male Performance (jointly awarded to Keith Fleming and Gerry Mulgrew who shared the title role), Best Design (Naomi Wilkinson), Best Director (Dominic Hill) and Best Production.

Peer Gynt was a co-production with the transient National Theatre of Scotland, which with two more wins for Six Characters in Search of an Author and The Emperor’s New Kilt, triumphed in six of the overall ten categories awarded in the prize-giving set up in 2003.

Elsewhere, Alan Wilkins’ Carthage Must Be Destroyed, premiered at the Traverse Theatre, won Best New Play, and Headlong’s revival of Tony Kushner’s two-part Aids-era epic Angels in America, which later transferred to London’s Lyric Hammersmith, was singled out for Best Technical Presentation, following its run at the co-producing Citizens’ Theatre in Glasgow.

The full shortlists – with winners denoted in bold – in this year’s sixth annual Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland, which the year from May 2007 to April 2008, are:

BEST MALE PERFORMANCE