Names and faces

Helen Mirren was crowned queen of the London stage at the Olivier Awards Sunday, and the compelling, canine-titled teen drama The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time emerged as best in show with seven trophies. Mirren, 67, was a popular and expected best-actress choice for her regal yet vulnerable Queen Elizabeth II in The Audience, Peter Morgan’s behind-palace-doors drama about the relationship between Britain’s queen and its prime ministers. The actress, who won an Academy Award in 2007 for playing Britain’s monarch in The Queen, quipped that it was 87-year-old Elizabeth who deserved an award, “for the most consistent and committed performance of the 20th century, and probably the 21st century.” Her co-star Richard McCabe won the supporting actor trophy for playing 1960s and ’70s Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The surprise of the awards ceremony at London’s Royal Opera House was Curious Incident, an adaptation of Mark Haddon’s best-selling young-adult novel about a teenage math prodigy with Asperger’s Syndrome who sets out to find the killer of his neighbor’s dog, with destabilizing results. The Simon Stephens-scripted drama was named best new play, and 28-year-old Luke Treadaway was crowned best actor. The play also won prizes for director Marianne Elliott and supporting actress Nicola Walker, as well as for set, lighting and sound.

The new stage musical Rocky, an adaptation of the Oscar-winning film about a streetwise boxer from Philadelphia, is heading to Broadway next year, with preview performances set to begin in February at the Winter Garden Theater, the lead producers announced Sunday. The show - conceived by Sylvester Stallone, who wrote and starred in the original Rocky in the 1970s - had its premiere in Hamburg, Germany, in November and received positive reviews from German theater critics for its gritty realism and inventively staged boxing sequences. That production cost about $20 million, a sum that included years of development expenses. The Broadway version is expected to cost about $15 million, according to Bill Taylor of Stage Entertainment USA, which is producing Rocky on Broadway with Stallone. Taylor, chief executive and producer of Stage Entertainment USA, denied a New York Post report that the Broadway production could cost nearly $30 million, which would have made Rocky among the most expensive musicals in history.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 04/30/2013

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