Last night saw theatrical history made when The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time took home seven awards, making it the most decorated play in Olivier Award history and tying with Matilda The Musical as the productions to win the most amount of Olivier Awards in one ceremony.
As the awards progressed and more and more of the National Theatre production’s multi-talented company came off stage clutching one of the coveted bronze statuettes, we were on hand to offer our congratulations and find out their immediate reactions to a staggeringly successful evening.
Nicola Walker, Best Actress in a Supporting Role
How does it feel to have won the award?
Really nice, I’m shaking!
Tell us about the process of bringing the book to life on stage.
We did a week’s workshop before we started rehearsing, and Marianne Elliott and Scott Graham from Frantic Assembly said: ‘Look, we don’t know how we’re going to do this, we don’t know what physical language we’re going to use, we’re just going to play with that for a week’. My dad picked me up in the car after that week and I said to him ‘I’ve just had the best week’s work I’ve ever done in my life’ because they just didn’t stop having ideas and they kept asking you to do things you’d never done before… it was really exciting.
Did it continue to evolve?
Yes, it’s different every night because you enter Christopher’s world. That’s all we worked towards, all the time, all anyone ever talked about: creating Christopher’s world. And once you do that, you stop looking at yourself. So you’ve got this amazing anti-hero by the end of the show and what amazed me every night is that people would be standing up clapping for this very awkward boy and they wanted him to win – and he does win.
Luke Treadaway, Best Actor
How does it feel to be an Olivier Award winner?
I never thought that would happen at all. I don’t know if I can speak. That is mental! I’m speechless. I’ve got to get a drink of champagne!
How does it feel to be part of such an amazing production?
I’ve loved it, every day of it, it’s been amazing.
Marianne Elliott, Best Director
Congratulations, the show is doing wonderfully well tonight.
It’s extraordinary. It’s a bit surreal. We really didn’t think we were out there to be a success. We were just trying to be really truthful and imaginative about how to tell the story. We were all working outside our comfort zones.
What do you think it is about the show that speaks to people?
I think it speaks to people because the genesis of the book is about understanding him [Christopher, the play’s protagonist] and, although he sees the world in a really unusual way, actually we think ‘That’s how I see it’ or ‘At times I feel as lost as that’ or ‘At times I feel that other people are as alien as that’.
Do you think it can run as long as War Horse?
Well, I hope so! Let’s see…
Simon Stephens, playwright and winner of MasterCard Best New Play
Congratulations, how does it feel?
It feels slightly overwhelming, I have to say. Tremendously overwhelming, but tremendously, tremendously exciting and immensely flattering.
The show has done amazingly well tonight.
It’s been great and the entire show is a complete collaboration in the way that the Ajax football team of 1974 played total football in which everybody played a role, everybody in Curious Incident worked together.
It’s not an easy book to adapt, how did you go about it?
I don’t know if it’s an easy one or not – it’s the only one I’ve ever done! Maybe I’ll do another adaptation and realise that Curious Incident was a difficult one. I just started with the book and I ended with the book and all I really wanted to do was dramatise the spirit of that book with as much clarity as I could, and if I’ve achieved that then that’s all I needed ever to achieve.”
The set is so integral to the show, was that in your head when you were adapting the play?
Elements of it were, but I never really came close to the imagination of Bunny Christie and Marianne Elliott to bring that together, or any of those people: Scott Graham and Stephen Hoggett from Frantic Assembly, Finn Ross the video designer, Paule Constable the lighting designer, Adrian Sutton the composer, Ian Dickinson the sound designer; it was all a complete collaboration.
Mark Haddon, writer of the original novel
How does it feel to have your novel adapted for the stage and win so many Olivier Awards?
Just profoundly wonderful. Bizarre as well. When I first wrote it I thought it would be really nice if I got a few thousand people to read it and now I feel like I’ve entered this parallel universe. I sat there on the first night and I thought ‘This is just the most wonderful piece of theatre’. I forgot it had anything to do with me, then I remembered it had something to do with me. It was one strange whirligig. It’s been amazing, absolutely amazing.
Do you think Simon Stephens did a good job of translating it for the stage?
He did a really great job. Like I said out there, he knew what it could be. One of the really exciting things about this play – for anyone who’s been to see it they will know – it’s not a talky play, it’s a play about movement, light, video, dance, so many different aspects. What other play has got mathematics, choreography and a live rat? It’s a winner!
Paule Constable, winner of the White Light Award for Lighting Design
How do you feel to have won tonight?
Brilliant! The show’s extraordinary and the fact it’s been acknowledged in any way is just beautiful. It’s really proper heart-felt theatre.
How does it feel to be part of such an amazingly successful production?
It’s the National Theatre isn’t it? They let us do what we do and sometimes that can create theatre magic. Without it we’d never make shows like that. It’s extraordinary so thank you to them more than anyone else. We are very lucky.
Do you think it’s got a long future ahead of it?
I really, really hope so. And this can only help.
Ian Dickinson and Adrian Sutton, winners of the Best Sound Design
Congratulations! How does it feel to have won?
Sutton: Very unexpected. Gobsmacked. It’s kind of a mild electric shock isn’t it?
How does it feel to be part of such a successful production?
Sutton: I’m still in awe of what it is that the whole team has achieved. I know we’re just one cog but it really does feel like a show in which everybody, as I said out the front, at the top of their game has come together and, bang, this incredible thing has been made.
Do you know where you’re going to put your awards?
Sutton: Oh, I think that might go in my studio, don’t you?
Dickinson: My son was desperate for me to win this. He’s four and a half. So probably his bedroom. For at least a week. And then he’ll forget about it.
Bunny Christie and Finn Ross, Best Set Design
How does it feel to have won?
Ross: Like nothing I thought I’d ever feel. It’s a testament to collaboration and what working together can bring, and how theatre made with a fantastic team can make audiences happy.
Christie: It’s like a cliché isn’t it, but we do actually all really work together and on this show more than any show I’ve ever done in my life I think. It was such a team effort and everybody worked so hard.
Was it difficult transferring the production to such a different stage in the West End from the National Theatre?
Christie: No, it was really good fun.
Ross: It’s so rare that you get a chance to do a show twice in two different environments in your lifetime and that was amazing.
Christie: And we all had a list – I certainly had a list – of things that we hadn’t managed to do first time around that we wanted to do second time around and we got almost all of them, so next time around maybe we’d get the other ones!