Sondheim Trounces 'Spamalot' at Oliviers
Sunday, February 18, 2007; 10:23 PM
LONDON -- A small budget revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical "Sunday in the Park With George" took a handful of prizes Sunday at the 2007 Laurence Olivier Awards, while the Monty Python romp "Spamalot" emerged the night's biggest loser.
"Spamalot" went home empty-handed despite seven nominations, including best new musical, for the prizes that honor the best of the London stage. The $12 million romp opened in London in October after a triumphant run on Broadway that saw it win three Tony awards.
  Members of the musical show 'Sunday In The Park With George' Producer David Babani, left, actor Daniel Evans, second left, actress Jenna Russell, second right, and Sam Buntrock, right, hold their Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Musical Production with presenter U.S. actress Lorna Luft, centre, during an awards ceremony in London, Sunday, Feb. 18, 2007. (AP Photo/Sang Tan) (Sang Tan - AP) Photos
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"Sunday in the Park" took five trophies, including outstanding musical production and acting awards for Jenna Russell and Daniel Evans. The show, now bound for Broadway, beat big-budget competition including "Cabaret," "Evita" and Andrew Lloyd Webber's revival of "The Sound of Music."
"I'm overwhelmed," said David Babani, producer of "Sunday in the Park." He said he was in "advanced negotiations" to bring the show _ based on the life of pointillist artist Georges Seurat _ to Broadway later this year.
David Harrower's riveting child-abuse drama "Blackbird" took the prize for best new play, while the National Theatre's production of Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" was named best revival.
The state-funded National also took the best director prize _ for Dominic Cooke of "The Crucible" _ and the award for best new musical for the British premiere of the Tony Kushner/Jeanine Tersori musical "Caroline, or Change."
"The 39 Steps" _ a stage adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock's 1930s film of the John Buchan thriller _ was named best new comedy.
Tamsin Greig _ best known for her roles in television sitcoms "Black Books" and "The Green Wing" _ took the prize for best actress in a play for the Royal Shakespeare Company's "Much Ado About Nothing."
Rufus Sewell was named best actor for "Rock 'n 'Roll," Tom Stoppard's play about rock and revolution in 1960s Czechoslovakia. It was the show's only win from four nominations.
Supporting actor honors went to Sheila Hancock for "Cabaret" and Jim Norton for "The Seafarer."
London's West End is celebrating a bumper box-office year.
The city's dozens of commercial and subsidized theaters took $786 million in ticket sales, an increase of almost 5 percent on 2005. Attendance topped 12 million, up 0.5 percent from the year before, according to statistics compiled by the Society of London Theatre.
Attendance slumped after the July 7, 2005, London transit bombings, but surged in the second half of 2006 with the opening of several big-ticket musicals including "Dirty Dancing," "Spamalot," "Wicked" and "The Sound of Music."
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