View from the Green Room: Talent explodes across Royal stage at brilliant Green Room Awards
Members of Waterford Panto Society at the Waterford News & Star Green Room Awards held at the Theatre Royal on Sunday night. Photo: Joe Evans
Nights like this are like the old finals of Tops. This was more buzzzzzzzzz than buzz, more glammmm than glamorous, more turbo-chaaarged than a nuclear power station.
The entire arts community in Waterford sitting down in one of the oldest theatres in Ireland to acknowledge the quality and diversity of artistic achievement in the Déise for the last year. And the noise was deafening!
I haven’t heard such noise in the theatre since results nights in the Sixties Tops.
The Waterford News & Star Green Room Awards had finally hit the stage and the anticipation was electric. The nominations were published three weeks ago and the debate began, who’s in and who’s out, what’s nominated and what’s not, who will be the biggest winners?
Nominees were thrilled. After all, we have awards for every sphere of life in Waterford – and rightly so. But these were OUR awards. The arts community awards that acknowledge excellence in every type of performance and artistic achievement.
What a joy it is to see historians applaud panto stars, artists applaud actors, radio presenters applaud stage managers, singers applaud backstage operatives. Because we’re all there in that theatre that opened its doors in 1784, where theatre has been continuous now for almost a quarter of a millennium.
Sometimes it’s huge and awards come in multiples. “Up Down Boy” that hoovered up the main gongs in amateur theatre (Best Actor, Actress, Director and Play) and the awards and performance of a scene from the play received five standing ovations on the night. Amazing.
Waterford Panto scooped four awards (Best Set, Sound and Lighting, Costumes, Director), while Four Rivers Theatre Co’s three major awards were won for Best Actor, Actress and Professional Play with Jim Nolan’s Castel Gandolfo.
Then sometimes it’s the individual awards that grab the attention. Rachel Ní Bhraonáin’s Best Dance performance in Garter Lane, along with Úna Ní Bhriain’s magnificent Best One-Person role in Once Off’s The Hare that also received Best New Play.
Shane Flynn scored a first ever Green Room Award for Portlaw Panto to huge applause, although nothing capped the excitement of Stradbally’s Stage Coach’s Best Youth Show.
Waterford Gallery of Art’s exhibition of Irish Art Olympians was acknowledged, as was Agnes Aylward’s talk on Lafcadio Hearn’s connections with Tramore.
SETU Music School's Youth Choir was named Best Choir and Caoimhe Scanlon got Best Youth Performance for her magical Spongebob.
Tramore’s Theatre Vamps did well in picking up a couple of big acting awards (Best Supporting Actress and Best Director), as did Curtain Call Productions from Dungarvan (Best Supporting Actor and Best Female Comic Performance).
Waterford Musical Society’s Evita was named Best Supporting Male (Bryan Tuohy) and Best MD with Wayne Brown – Wayne also picked up the gong for Best Radio Series with his Showtime programme on WLR FM.
The astonishing Alex Kavanagh received Best Actress for her portrayal of Carole King, while Anne Marie Collins was rewarded with Best Supporting Actress for Nunsense. Conor Lyons (Best Actor) and Jack Cunningham (Choreographer) picked up awards for Crazy for You. Despite massive competition from other musicals – it was a big year for musical theatre in the Déise – Crazy for You was named Best Musical.
Whatever way the awards come, they’re greeted with screams of delight. As are the nominations. MD for the night, Wayne Brown had underscoring for the announcement of the nominations that would have spooked century-old ghosts, along with fanfares for the winners that would have kept Dáil candidates on edge for weeks.
MC for the evening Dymphna Nugent is witty, informative and keeps the show on the road. Our production team gave us a top-drawer concert that was full of variety and quality and representative of all the work I’ve reviewed over the last year: musical theatre, classical music, professional and amateur drama, history talks and art exhibitions, ballet and dance.
Jack Cunningham Productions opened the show with a spectacular, panoramic Crazy For You that dazzled. David Hennessy Productions enthralled us with excerpts from Beautiful – The Carole King Musical, while his scene from 'Up Down Boy' brought many tears in the theatre.
Is there anyone more talented than Richie Hayes as a song and dance man? His Mr. Bojangles – with Jack Cunningham tap-dancing the choruses – was just a piece of magic.
Waterford Panto blasted us away with a tap-dancing blitz to open Act 2, while renowned soprano Róisín O’Grady delighted with that G&S classic Poor Wandering One from Pirates.
Jenna Dunphy astonished with Defying Gravity, before Theatre Vamps crammed as many ABBA numbers as a politician could cram promises into eight minutes.
The announcements bounced between myself and Dymphna and injected that frisson of tension that was just right. Winners were quickly brought to the stage from all over the house by the hard-working Theatre Royal front of house staff, where the Awards were presented by Mayor Jason Murphy, lead sponsors Cantec Group and Waterford Credit Union, represented by Éadaoin Carrick and Jenny O’Mahony, and Michael Grant, Mary Frances Ryan, Des O’Keefe and Sarah Jane Cleary.
There was a gin bar in the Foyer dispensing free gin – courtesy of Blackwater Distillery – and the amazingly talented Killian Browne’s jazz combo to welcome the public beforehand and send happy out patrons into the theatre.
The People’s Choice Award went to European City of Christmas Opening Ceremony, and the Outstanding Cultural and Heritage Event of the Year went to the Waterford Chamber Music Festival for its inaugural three-day festival of chamber music at Mount Congreve.
The biggest reception of the night was reserved for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Waterford playwright Jim Nolan is a nationally and internationally regarded playwright with a body of work that is truly remarkable.
Jim’s first play, 'The Flowers of May', was entered into a competition for new one-act plays and the prize was £100 and a performance of the work in the Theatre Royal. I’m delighted to say that the Waterford News & Star was right there at the beginning with this fledgling playwright.
Since then, Jim has written an astonishing 24 plays that have been performed both nationally and internationally – New York, London, Ottawa, Dublin and all over Ireland.
Jim is renowned for his writing and also for his generous promotion of young writing talent. He was artist in residence at the Theatre Royal, Garter Lane and the Abbey Theatre, and has worked with and directed huge names in the theatre industry. Jim is a published playwright with eight titles to his name and he was also a founder member of Red Kettle Theatre Co.
The screen rolled footage of Waterford’s Jim Nolan in recognition of Jim’s contribution to Irish and Waterford theatre. Long before the film finished, the audience were on their feet to pay tribute to this wordsmith of theatre and the ovation was long and sustained.
A great finale to a great night on the Mall.
