Olivier Awards to rename Best Director prize after Sir Peter Hall after In Memoriam omission

Getty Images

The Olivier Awards will name its Best Director award after Sir Peter Hall, following his omission from this year’s In Memoriam section at the ceremony.

The Society of London Theatre issued a statement to say that as of next year “and in perpetuity thereafter”, the award would be renamed the Sir Peter Hall Award for Best Director.

In the statement, the organisation said it “apologises unreservedly for this serious error”, describing Sir Peter as “a giant of British Theatre”.

It also added that the process by which people are included in the In Memoriam segment for future ceremonies would be reviewed, and issued an updated video of the segment.

Sir Peter, who founded the Royal Shakespeare Company and was Laurence Olivier’s successor at the National Theatre, died in September at the age of 86.

Upon his passing last year, current National Theatre boss Rufus Norris said: “We all stand on the shoulders of giants and Peter Hall’s shoulders supported the entirety of British theatre as we know it.”

Sir Peter Hall - In pictures

1/10

Many expressed outrage when he was not included in the segment during Sunday night’s ceremony, which was followed by an apology from the Olivier Awards on Twitter.

Sir Matthew Bourne wrote on Twitter that he was “flabberghasted”, and theatre producer and daughter of Hall described the mistake as “painful”.

The awards themselves were dominated by Hamilton, which took home seven prizes including Best New Musical.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in