British-based designer Nigel Hook was named winner of the Award for Best Scenic Design of a Play for The Play That Goes Wrong at last night’s 71st annual Tony Awards ceremony.
Hook claimed the award for his work on the collapsing set pieces key to the Olivier Award-winning comically disastrous farce, which made its Broadway transfer in April of this year.
Co-written by Mischief Theatre company members Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, The Play That Goes Wrong is a riotous comedy about the theatre in which The ‘Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society’ attempt to put on a 1920s’ murder mystery – but as the title suggests, everything that can go wrong… does.
The show is currently booking in the West End at the Duchess Theatre until 25 February 2018.
Elsewhere, new musical Dear Evan Hansen was the big winner of the night, claiming 6 Awards including Best Musical, Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical (Ben Platt), and Best Original Score (Pasek & Paul), while London-bound diplomacy drama Oslo took home Best Play. British audiences can look forward to Oslo transferring to the National Theatre and West End in September: it will have its UK premiere at the National Theatre’s Lyttelton Theatre from 5 – 23 September, before transferring to the Harold Pinter Theatre from 30 September to 30 December 2017.
Another Olivier-winning performer, Gavin Creel (Best Actor in a Musical for The Book Of Mormon in 2014), won Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his role in Hello, Dolly!, while British sound designers Gareth Fry & Pete Malkin, masterminds behind the aurally immersive technology of Simon McBurney and Complicite’s one-man play The Encounter, collected a Special Tony Award for their ground-breaking work.
Kevin Spacey hosted the ceremony at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in a joyous celebration of Broadway’s finest from the past year.
For a full list of winners, see the Tony Awards website.