Gillian Lynne and Dominic Cooke, recipients at this year’s Olivier Awards with MasterCard, are among a host of theatre names renowned for their work onstage and off to be recognised in the Queen’s 2014 New Year’s Honours list.
Olivier Award-winning choreographer Lynne, who received a Special Award at this year’s ceremony, is awarded the title of Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to dance and musical theatre. Her work for the London stage includes world-renowned musicals Cats and The Phantom Of The Opera.
Former Artistic Director of the Royal Court Dominic Cooke, whose eclectic programming in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs was awarded the 2013 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre, receives a CBE for services to drama.
Fellow Olivier Award winner and legendary theatre producer Michael Codron, who is best known for producing early work by Harold Pinter, Christopher Hampton, David Hare, Simon Gray and Tom Stoppard, receives a knighthood for services to theatre.
Alongside the trio of theatre creatives, West End performers including Angela Lansbury, Penelope Keith and Michael Crawford also receive the Queen’s seal of approval in the 2014 Honours list.
Stage and screen star Lansbury, who is set to star in Michael Blakemore’s revival of Blithe Spirit in 2014, and Olivier Award winner Keith, whose most recent London stage credits include The Importance Of Being Earnest and The Rivals, both become Dames, while Crawford, who is well-known for originating the role of the mysterious masked figure in The Phantom Of The Opera, is awarded a CBE.
Actress and presenter Lynda Bellingham, last seen on the London stage in 2007’s Vincent River at the Trafalgar Studios, and writer and comedienne Sandi Toksvig, whose topical play Bully Boy opened the St James theatre’s inaugural season last year, will also be preparing to visit Buckingham Palace in the new year after each receiving an OBE.
Elsewhere in theatre, Nick Allott, Managing Director of Cameron Mackintosh Ltd, which produces West End hits including Les Misérables and The Phantom Of The Opera, is honoured with an OBE, while, in the world of opera and dance, English National Opera’s outgoing Chief Executive Loretta Tomasi receives an OBE, and Cuban dancer and Royal Ballet member Carlos Acosta is given a CBE.