REPORT: BWW At The Whatsonstage Awards

A boozy, fun night out complete with copious amounts of free wine, much networking and a lot of celeb-spotting is the very least you would expect from the Whatsonstage Awards, and thankfully it delivered in abundance. Co-hosted by the unsuppressable Christopher Biggins and the gorgeous Mel Giedroyc, the result was a slightly disorganised yet enjoyable affair full of meandering, innuendo-filled jokes and storming performances from a variety of West End stars.

While the night got off to a somewhat slow start thanks to an extended SheriDan Smith/James Corden joke soon followed by Trevor Nunn's exceptionally long acceptance speech for Best Director, leaving the show running 25 minutes behind at the interval, this was thankfully not at the expense of the musical numbers, all of which were of a high standard and kept the night whizzing along satisfactorily. Of particular note were Ryan Molloy's early Jersey Boys rendition, Alexia Khadime's heartfelt Wizard And I and Hannah Waddingham's spine-tingling version of Send In The Clowns.

The high point, naturally, was the medley from the all-male Pirates of Penzance, the production I've been championing since seeing it last July, which won the Best Off-West End Production award. Seeing twenty men harmonising beautifully without massive orchestra back up, shocking the audience a little with a bit of romance (I mean, really, what did you think was going to happen if you create an all-male production of Pirates, complete with love story?) between Mabel (Adam Ellis) and Frederick (Russell Whitehead) and ending with a storming rendition of Hail Poetry.

Massive applause was reserved for Patina Miller, who won Best Actress In A Musical for her performances as Deloris in Sister Act, and Oliver Thornton, who won Best Supporting Actor In A Musical. Both became visibly emotional during their acceptance speeches and were gifted with tissues by a handily-placed GiedroyC. Thornton, in particular, seemed unable to keep a hold on his emotions, speaking about how he had been on constant vocal rest for the past year and had had the "social life of a slug".

Although there were some odd choices, such as the decision to keep winners on stage if their production had won another award, and rather than announce each separately, merely state '[relevant show] has also won for Best Set Design', or to get them onstage to perform after the announcement and before picking up the prize. This took rather a large chunk out of the suspense of the evening (sources said some winners had been told in advance to ensure their attendance - and indeed, Jodie Prenger revealed onstage that she already knew her production had won another award besides her own personal one) and perhaps could be tweaked for next year's show.

Meanwhile, a few big names didn't show up to accept their awards - Rachel Weisz, Jude Law and John Barrowman amongst them - but this didn't really seem to matter in the end, as all sent appreciative video messages or collaborators (Ruth Wilson, in the case of Weisz) to collect their awards for them. The theme of the Whatsonstage Awards is fun, fun, fun, and we certainly had a lot of that.

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