Best Actor in a Play
Kyle Soller, The Inheritance
As Eric Glass, Soller’s sensitively nuanced performance is one of the most crucial in The Inheritance, the development of his humanity and the lightness of his humour goes a long way to sustaining the considerable heft of this two-part epic.
Honourable mention: Hans Kesting, Oedipus
A real birthday treat this was, Kesting giving us Sophocles via Icke, effortlessly redefining tragic Greek figures for the contemporary age. Entirely capturing the modern politician’s dilemma about how ‘real’ to be, his dogged pursuit of the truth was as compelling as it has ever been.
Ben Batt, The York Realist
Ian Bonar, Jellyfish
Paapa Essiedu, The Convert
Richard Harrington, Home I’m Darling
Shubnam Saraf, An Adventure
8-10
Edward Hogg, The Wild Duck; Gerard Kearns, To Have To Shoot Irishmen; Richard McCabe, Imperium
Best Actor in a Musical
Steven Miller, Sunshine on Leith
Musical theatre is so often derided as frothy flights of fancy that it can be easy to be surprised when a performance of real honesty shines through. Miller’s Davy, a bluff squaddie struggling to readjust to life after a tour in the Middle East, captured so much of that magical ‘extraordinary in the ordinary’ quality from his dancing to his singing, as well as his acting, that I could hardly take my eyes off him.
Honourable mention: Andrew Finnigan, Drip
I’m not picking Finnigan because he picked me to be his audience hunk (honest) but for the irresistible charm of his effortlessly guileless Liam, the kind of hero you can’t help but root for and exactly the kind of (incidentally) gay characters we need our culture to be suffused with.
Paul-James Corrigan, Sunshine on Leith
Arinzé Kene, Misty
Michael Mathers, Mythic
Leon Scott, Midnight
Zubin Varla, Fun Home
8-10
David Haydn, The Secret Garden; Daniel Healy, Once; Mark Inscoe, Priscilla Queen of the Desert
