Royal Court Theatre Leads The Way In Standard Awards

The Royal Court Theatre led the way in yesterday’s Evening Standard Awards, taking the gong in four out of the eight categories: Best Actor, Best Play, Best Director and Most Promising Playwright.

The Royal Court’s two sell-out hit shows, Jerusalem and ENRON, went head to head in their categories, with Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem winning two awards – Best Play and Best Actor for Mark Rylance; and Headlong Theatre’s Artistic Director Rupert Goold named as Best Director for ENRON.

Alia Bano won the Charles Wintour award for Most Promising Playwright with her new play Shades exploring the tolerance in London’s Muslim community, which opened the Court’s Young Writers Festival earlier this year. Shades was developed during the Royal Court’s Unheard Voices programme in 2008 – a programme created to find, nurture and develop the next generation of young British Muslim playwrights.

Dominic Cooke, Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre, said:

“It’s really thrilling to see such a range of our work recognised in this way from Shades‘ writer Alia Bano winning for her debut, to plaudits for Lucy Prebble’s second play Enron and the success of established writer Jez Butterworth with his epic Jerusalem. All of these writers have grown through the Royal Court’s long-term investment in them, which includes our unparalleled writing programmes, and I’m delighted that after 53 years the Royal Court is still as relevant today as ever. We take great pride in offering up the very best new plays to become the classics of the future.”

Both Jerusalem and ENRON played to sell-out houses and critical acclaim when they opened this summer. Both plays will transfer to the West End in January 2010 – the first time since 1968, and for only the third time in its history – that the Royal Court will have transferred two consecutive productions to the West End.

Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem – a comic, contemporary vision of life in our green and pleasant land – opened in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs at the Royal Court in July and was directed by former Royal Court Artistic Director Ian Rickson with a cast that included Mark Rylance and Mackenzie Crook.