Tom Hiddleston, Jude Law: Stars compete for Olivier Awards

INDEPENDENT WOMAN
UPDATED 10 MARCH 2014 02:02 PM



Tom Hiddleston and Jude Law will compete for the best actor honour at this year's Olivier Awards, but there is no room for fellow Hollywood star Daniel Radcliffe on the shortlist.

Other nominees for the prestigious theatre awards include Dame Judi Dench who is shortlisted for best actress and Sherlock star Mark Gatiss whose performance in Coriolanus at the Donmar Warehouse sees him nominated for best supporting actor.

Dame Judi is nominated for Peter And Alice in which she starred opposite fellow Bond cast member Ben Whishaw.

Sam Mendes' musical of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and the revival of Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along lead the field with seven nominations each.

Law and Hiddleston, nominated for the title roles in Henry V and Coriolanus respectively, face competition from Henry Goodman and another of Dame Judi's 007 co-stars Rory Kinnear.

Goodman is recognised for his performance in The Resistible Rise Of Arturo Ui at the Duchess Theatre, while Kinnear's Iago in the National Theatre production of Othello sees him shortlisted.

Radcliffe, who won best actor at the What's On Stage Awards for The Cripple of Inishmaan, is not shortlisted.

READ MORE HERE: http://www.independent.ie/woman/celeb-news/stars-compete-for-olivier-awards-30078823.html

Rupert Grint, Brendan Coyle, Ben Whishaw and Daniel Mays star in Mojo revival

Ian Rickson's all-star production at the Harold Pinter Theatre from 26 October

By Theo Bosanquet • 25 Jul 2013 • London

WHAT'S ON STAGE

As previously rumoured, Harry Potter star Rupert Grint will make his stage debut in a revival of Jez Butterworth's play Mojo later this year.

According to the Daily Mail, Grint will star alongside Brendan Coyle (Downton Abbey), Ben Whishaw (Skyfall, Hamlet) and Daniel Mays (Trelawny of the Wells, Mrs Biggs) in the production.

Brendan Coyle will return to the stage after a gap due to his Downton Abbey commitments. An accomplished stage actor, he won an Olivier Award in 1999 for Conor McPherson's The Weir (the Donmar's recent revival of which is transferring  to the West End in January).

Ben Whishaw rose to prominence after starring in Trevor Nunn's acclaimed Old Vic production of Hamlet directly out of drama school. He has since appeared on stage in Mike Bartlett's Cock at the Royal Court and, most recently, Peter and Alice opposite Judi Dench in the West End.

READ MORE: http://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/news/07-2013/rupert-grint-brendan-coyle-ben-whishaw-and-daniel-_31420.html

Dame Judi Dench takes pals to meet the wildlife lover she could wed (TELEGRAPH) By Richard Eden7:22AM BST 30 Jun 2013

Dame Judi Dench's 30-year marriage to Michael Williams was just as successful in real life as it was on screen in the hit Eighties sitcom A Fine Romance. Friends of the 78-year-old actress say she may now be ready for a second wedding.

Dame Judi has been courting David Mills, 70, a conservationist, for three years. This week, she is to take her fellow stars of the recent West End play Peter and Alice on a visit to the British Wildlife Centre, which Mills runs.

“I am going to go with the rest of the Peter and Alice cast,” Ben Whishaw tells Mandrake at the Evian Suite at Wimbledon.

“Her partner has a wildlife sanctuary in Surrey, so we are going to visit her there. All of us. It’s not far from where she lives on the Surrey / Sussex border.”

Williams died of lung cancer in 2001 at the age of 65.

Last year, Dame Judi spoke about the macular degeneration that she suffered, for which she has been treated with injections into the eye.

“It was amazing how she carried on stage with her eye problem,” says Whishaw, 32, who played Q to Dench’s M in the James Bond film Skyfall. “ You would never know that she had it, and she never talked about it. “She is such a trouper and professional.”


read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/10150401/Dame-Judi-Dench-takes-pals-to-meet-the-wildlife-lover-she-could-wed.html

Judi Dench: Peter and Alice, Noel Coward Theatre, review (TELEGRAPH)

Peter and Alice, starring Skyfall's Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw, is a moving theatrical chamber piece which couldn't be further removed from the Bond blockbuster, says Charles Spencer.

By Charles Spencer7:00AM GMT 26 Mar 2013

If you had to imagine a work that was the complete antithesis of the brilliant Bond blockbuster, Skyfall, it might resemble Peter and Alice, a moving, 90-minute theatrical chamber piece about childhood, growing up and the pressure of literary immortality.

Yet it has been written by John Logan, one of the scriptwriters on Skyfall, and stars Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw who play M and Q in 007’s latest adventure.

They both give beautiful, heart-catching performances in this haunting play that sounds profound notes of loss and grief.

The piece was inspired by a small footnote in literary history. In 1932, Alice Liddell Hargreaves, who was the model for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, met Peter Llewellyn Davies, one of five brothers into whose lives JM Barrie insinuated himself, and who inspired Peter Pan. Barrie wrote that he created the young boy who never grew up “by rubbing the five of you violently together, as savages with two sticks produce a flame” but it was Peter who bore the name of the character that was to haunt and trouble him throughout his unhappy life.

The play shows Peter and Alice meeting in the dusty backroom of a bookshop where Alice is to open an exhibition celebrating Carroll’s centenary. Peter is there because he is a publisher and hopes to get a book out of her. At first Alice, now 80, is haughty. “You’re presumptuous,” she tells Peter, and no actress is more capable of suggesting withering disdain in just two words than Dame Judi. But Peter perseveres and they talk about the way their lives have been marked and to different extents marred by the writers and the books that trapped them in immortal youth.

READ MORE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/9952907/Peter-and-Alice-Noel-Coward-Theatre-review.html

Mirren, Dench crown London theater tour December 9, 2012 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Judi Dench and Helen Mirren head the cast list for the Post-Gazette's early spring Critic's Choice theater tour to London, March 10-17, when the daffodils and magnolias will be in bloom. Along with London's palaces, street life, museums, cathedrals and pubs, the trip features three plays and a chance to see several more. Chosen so far are:

• "Peter and Alice," John Logan's new play about Alice Liddell and Peter Davies, played by Ms. Dench and Ben Whishaw (James Bond's new Q). Alice and Peter are the real-life people who inspired "Alice in Wonderland" and "Peter Pan." "Enchantment and reality collide," says the press release. (Note: we will see "Peter and Alice" in the first week of its previews, before it has been reviewed by the critics.)

• "The Audience," with Ms. Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II, is by Peter Morgan, who wrote "The Queen," the movie in which Ms. Mirren also played Elizabeth II and won an Oscar. In this new play, the queen meets with a series of prime ministers, from Churchill to Cameron.


Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/life/travel/mirren-dench-crown-london-theater-tour-665558/#ixzz2EZNJjduI