Olivier Awards 2024: Top five shocks, surprises and delightful moments

The Olivier Awards took place last night! With a huge night celebrating the great and good of London theatre, we thought we’d pick out a select few delightful moments, shocks and surprises that stood out. You can see who took home the full list of wins here.

A back-of-the-net James Graham win! 

An early delight in act one was James Graham’s win for Best New Play – his first win in the category. Having previously won for Best New Comedy for Labour of Love, it was a joy to see Graham finally bag the Play prize for Dear England, an all-round sensation of a play that matches two of the UK’s favourite institutions – the arts and football. Graham is keen for the show to head out on tour (on top of its forthcoming TV adaptation) – so Dear England may only still be warming up on its way to world domination.

Sunset Boulevard went for a stroll 

Here was a shocker, mostly because it wasn’t announced beforehand: not only did it pick up a whole record-matching number of awards on the night, but Sunset Boulevard also pulled off one of the most impressive performances in Olivier Awards history. Replicating its dastardly feat at the Savoy Theatre, the production delivered a single-take performance of the title track, sung with gusto by the award winner Tom Francis. The masterminds behind the performance, WhatsOnStage Award winning video designers Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransome, had to lay hundreds of metres of cable to make it work, but the results speak for themselves. Francis enters that Royal Albert Hall auditorium like a true rockstar – pure class.

Hadyn Gwynne remembered 

Another delightful moment came with the best supporting actress nod going to Haydn Gwynne for her last stage appearance – in the Donmar’s When Winston Went to War With The Wireless, Jack Thorne’s solid deep-dive into a pocket of fascinating broadcasting history. Having Gwynne’s son coming up to deliver the speech in her honour was particularly poignant – though perhaps not her most show-stopping performance, the award comes after a prolific career in some of the most loved new plays and musicals in recent memory.

Sunset’s sweep 

With one look… Nicole Scherzinger won the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical! #OlivierAwards pic.twitter.com/7gvoww6GZF

— WhatsOnStage (@WhatsOnStage) April 15, 2024

When we mentioned record-matching earlier – Sunset Boulevard matched Cabaret’s tally for most Olivier Awards ever received by a musical revival – seven in total. It was only in the second half that the awards started piling up, including the hotly contested Best Musical Revival category, which has seen the show go toe-to-toe with the Bridge Theatre’s Guys and Dolls across the awards season thus far. Sunset triumphed where Guys and Dolls took the WhatsOnStage Award, but it felt like an exciting step on the show’s journey towards Broadway.

Joey! 

While the iconic Australian cartoon dog Bluey may have been the darling of the green carpet, it sadly didn’t get a chance to grace the Olivier Awards stage. That honour went to another puppet – the National Theatre’s venerated war horse Joey, from the special show about to embark on another major tour. Joey was part of a huge celebration marking 60 years of the National Theatre, with a performance from Carousel, appearances from Rufus Norris and the company of Dear England – here’s to the next 60!