Olivier Awards why the judges got it wrong

By Charles Spencer 1239PM GMT twenty-three March 2010

EVERY prize-giving rite needs a warn up the sleeve, if usually to keep the assembly watchful during those unctuous, perpetual speeches, but the delight of The Mountaintop at the Olivier Awards on Sunday night seems impolite to the point of lunacy.

Video The Mountaintop at Trafalgar Studio 1 - talk with the expel The Mountaintop at Theatre503, examination The Mountaintop, Theatre503, examination Miscarriage of probity some-more remuneration systematic by judges Rush Limbaugh The man whos regularly Right

I tenderly welcomed the play, by 28-year-old American Katori Hall, when it eliminated from a little border venue to the West End last year. Its comment of Martin Luther Kings review with a road house handmaid (who isnt utterly what she seems) on the night prior to his gangland slaying was moving, droll and ingenious, and tapped in to the suggestion of confidence following Obamas choosing win.

But to indicate that this fool around is improved than Jez Butterworths Jerusalem, one of the biggest new dramas I have seen in some-more than thirty years of reviewing, or Lucy Prebbles Enron, a riveting comment of the fall of the appetite house that right away seems a messenger of the monetary woes, is simply absurd.

After this debacle, the Olivier judges should severely think of instituting a majority earnest playwright award, mysteriously absent from the prolonged list of categories. Katori Hall would positively have been a estimable leader of that had it existed.

Elsewhere, the judges suggested a surer touch. Rachel Weisz (A Streetcar Named Desire) and Mark Rylance (Jerusalem) were righteously rewarded with the most appropriate behaving gongs.

I was additionally gay that Spring Awakening, with the biggest pop-rock measure given Hair, won the most appropriate new low-pitched award, even though it flopped in the West End. And Regents Parks giddily beguiling reconstruction of Hello Dolly! deservedly won 3 awards, for the prolongation itself, Samantha Spiro in the pretension role, and Stephen Mear for his vibrantly resourceful choreography.

Nevertheless, the 2010 Olivier Awards will be remembered customarily for creation such a spectacularly misled preference of most appropriate new play.