Producers revival and Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia nominated for 2026 Olivier Awards

Up for best actor in a musical is Andy Nyman, who portrays Max Bialystock in The Producers in a performance described as “desperate, and quintessentially Jewish” in the JC’s four-star review of the production last September. Nyman’s castmate, Marc Antolin, who portrays Max’s accountant, is nominated in the same category.

Arcadia, showing at the Old Vic[Missing Credit]

Stoppard’s Arcadia also received a four-star review in the JC, in February.

Stoppard, who died in December aged 88, was born Tomas Straussler to a non-observant Jewish family in the city of Zlin. To escape the Nazi’s, the family moved to Singapore, then India. But Stoppard’s father, Eugen was left behind and died when the Japanese bombed a ship he was on. His mother, Martha, then married an English army major, Kenneth Stoppard, and the young Tom lived in the UK from the age of nine, knowing nothing about his past as a refugee. In the early 1990s, a relative he had never met before told him the full story. He did not even know he was Jewish at the time.

The Laurence Olivier Awards, which are widely recognised as the highest honour in British theatre, are presented annually by the Society of London Theatre.

This year’s winners will be announced at a ceremony on April 12 at London’s Royal Albert Hall, marking the awards’ 50th anniversary.