LONDONâ€"This Sunday the London theater’s annual Laurence Olivier Awards will be bestowed, and those who want to guess at the eventual victors should know one thing: Anyone could win.
That’s not entirely true, I suppose, in a few categories. There may well be a minor mutiny within the plush surrounds of the Royal Opera House if Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton don’t pick up the actor and actress in a musical prizes for their thunderous performances in the recent Chichester Festival Theatre production of “Sweeney Todd.†The director Jonathan Kent’s revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical  transferred last year to London’s West End for a six-month run.
Yes, their competition in both categories is pretty thin, as reflects a year (2012) in which Londoners’ eyes were focused more on the Olympics than big musicals. (That shortfall, by the way, is being seriously redressed this year, which offers the most musicals-intensive lineup in many a season.)
But even amid a stronger array of colleagues, these two star turns would stand apart, Mr. Ball for physically reinventing himself to play the murderous barber of the title and Ms. Staunton for about as completely rounded a Mrs. Lovett as one could imagine, in which terror, comedy and pity joined forces to roof-raising effect.
Look elsewhere, though, and Oliviers are up for grabs, not least in a town that very much doesn’t play by the rules that prevail at Broadway’s Tonys - whose own list of nominations is due on April 30. (The Oliviers are decided upon by a mixture of industry professionals and a theater panel totaling in the region of 160, though not everyone necessarily votes in every category.)
The Tony rule of thumb is that the last shows in tend to be the first to nab the prizes, the same rationale that accounts for a flood of Oscar hopefuls toward the end of every year. Not so at the Oliviers. To be sure, Peter Morgan’s play “The Audience,†starring Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II, is up for five prizes, having opened in March just at the cusp of eligibility for this year’s gongs. By contrast, another British dame, Judi Dench, opened in “Peter and Alice†in late March a few weeks after the cut-off, so she and her co-star, Ben Whishaw, will be considered in the 2014 nominations.
But I’m not sure that I would necessarily value Ms. Mirren’s chances any higher than her three challengers for best actress, all of whom are in plays that have closed. Hattie Morahan must be some sort of favorite for her wild-eyed, ceaselessly febrile Nora in the Young Vic’s revival of “A Doll’s House,†given that Ms. Morahan has already won this same prize from two separate organizations in the run-up to the Oliviers.  (Rounding out the category are previous Olivier winner Kristin Scott Thomas for “Old Times†and Billie Piper in “The Effect.â€)
Why four nominees for actress in a play but five when it comes to actor, among them James McAvoy’s “Macbeth†and Rupert Everett’s Oscar Wilde in “The Judas Kiss�  (My hunch, by the way, is that Mr. Everett will win.)
The answer lies in a tie during the nominating process, which also accounts for five women making the supporting actress short list as against four in the supporting actor race. Why the Oliviers can’t widen their pool to five nominees across the board seems distinctly odd in a theater culture that each year offers up for consideration more than twice the number of possible shows than is ever managed by the Tonys.
That abundance, in turn, speaks to the British capital’s sustained output of work from subsidized playhouses like the National and to the inclusion sometimes, though not always, of so-called “affiliate theaters†like the Young Vic, whose off-Broadway equivalents are ineligible for Tonys.
If the Oliviers were purely a numbers game, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time†and “Top Hat†would sweep the boards, since Simon Stephens’s play (which opened at the National and has transferred to the West End) and the Irving Berlin-scored musical at the Aldwych Theatre have 15 nods between them.
But this is awards event that goes its own way. Two years ago, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “Love Never Dies†received seven nominations but came away empty-handed. By contrast, August Wilson’s lovely play “Jitney†was nominated in just one category in 2002 - Best Play - and took it against opposition from four British shows. (There were five nominees back in those days. Sigh ….. )
Parochialism obviously is not an issue here, which can’t always be said of a scenario on Broadway that has allowed such decisions as the awarding of the 1995 Tony for Best Play to Terrence McNally’s “Love! Valour! Compassion!†over Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia.†No surprises for guessing which of those two titles has proven far and away the more enduring text.
You could question this year’s nominations for Mark Rylance and Jenny Tiramani as actor and costume designer, respectively, of the Globe Theatre’s successful commercial transfer of the director Tim Carroll’s all-male “Twelfth Night.†Um, wasn’t Mr. Rylance nominated for an Olivier for the same part (Olivia) in 2003, the year in which Ms. Tiramani won for her costume designs for this very play, as also directed by Mr. Carroll? The explanation, I gather, is that this go-round was deemed a new production, presumably because of the passage of time and a (largely) new supporting cast.
In which case, I look forward to Mr. Rylance reprising this part and this play once a decade until it eventually brings him this award. In the meanwhile, when it comes to Sunday’s gong-giving, may the best man or woman â€" or even man-dressed-as-woman â€" win.
