Swan Awards, 2022-23
High Flyers
Swan Awards, 2022-23
Arts Richmond at the Landmark Arts Centre, Teddington
Eat your heart out, Oscars, for the Swans have come to roost again.
The Swan Awards for excellence in local theatre were first conferred in September 1986 for the best of non-commercial theatre in Richmond upon Thames during the 1985-86 season. A grand dinner dance was held in the Richmond Hill Hotel to announce the winners, who were each presented with a wooden Swan crafted by sculptor Lesley Beaumont. The event has taken place every year since.
This year’s awards ceremony took place at Teddington’s Landmark Centre on 17th September followed by a series of entertainments and a disco. Winners are now presented with an elegant glass Swan for the 2022-23 season.
Unusually, there are two joint winners for Best Production of a Play, Teddington Theatre Club’s Incident at Vichy and Richmond Shakespeare Society’s production of Henry V.
Mark Aspen’s drama critic, David Marks, described Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy as “a warning from history” and TTC’s production as “a tribute to the ingenuity of the director Clare Cooper and her team” and its top-notch actors. These included Luke Daxon as Professor Hoffman, who wins the Best Supporting Male Performer in a Play and Jack Dwyer as Boy, who is a joint winner of the Best Young Performer award. Marks thought that Daxon’s portrayal was “cold and clinical and yet perfectly reasonable. He is the embodiment of how atrocities can be normalised”. Dwyer was “impressive and truly moving”. David Mark’s full review can be read at www.markaspen.com/2022/11/17/vichy.
Brent Muirhouse, reviewing RSS’s Henry V for Mark Aspen Reviews, “couldn’t help be drawn into” director Francesca Ellis’ “multi-layered … king’s ransom of a performance”. The eponymous King Henry V was played by Luciano Dodero, who takes away the top individual award as join winner of the Best Male Performer in a Play. Muirhouse wrote, “Henry’s authority and indeed charm was conveyed by Luciano Dodero in a performance of stature …”. The full review is at www.markaspen.com/2023/04/25/henry-v-rss. Also for Henry V Scott Tilley won the Wild Swan Award for his fight direction.
This is just a brief toe-the-water of the Swan lake of this year’s twenty-two awards. The ever higher standard is such that in many cases joint awards that were, illustrating the difficulty in distinguishing between the excellent and the excellent amongst another flock of high-flying Swans.
Mark Aspen, September 2023
Photography by Oleksandr P, Kim Harding and Simone Best
Mark Aspen 