Oliviers Reaction: THE AUDIENCE Producers 'Delighted' With Five Nominations!

The Audience, Peter Morgan's new play about the Queen's meetings with her prime ministers, has been nominated for five Olivier Awards this year.

The nominations include Best New Play, Best Costume Design, Best Director and individual nominations for Helen Mirren (Best Actress) and Richard McCabe (Best Supporting Actor).

A spokesman for the show told BWW:UK this afternoon: "The producers of The Audience are really delighted with the five Olivier nominations. Mounting this brilliant production of a fine new play straight into the West End has been a challenging and rewarding endeavour and has kept us all at it."

For sixty years Elizabeth II has met each of her twelve Prime Ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace - a meeting like no other in British public life - it is private. Both parties have an unspoken agreement never to repeat what is said. Not even to their spouses.

The Audience breaks this contract of silence - and imagines a series of pivotal meetings between the Downing Street incumbents and their Queen. From Churchill to Cameron, each Prime Minister has used these private conversations as a sounding board and a confessional - sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive.

From young mother to grandmother, these private audiences chart the arc of the second Elizabethan Age. Politicians come and go through the revolving door of electoral politics, while she remains constant, waiting to welcome her next Prime Minister.