On Sunday, at the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards, the Australian-American actress and film producer, Nicole Kidman, won the best actress award for her role as a DNA researcher in Anna Ziegler's award-winning play, "Photograph 51."
The 48 year old Nicole Kidman, performing on the London stage for the first time since 1998, has taken over rave reviews for her portrayal of Rosalind Franklin, whose use of X-ray diffraction images aided the cause to the discovery of DNA's double helix structure.
The Scottish actor James McAvoy went home with the best actor for a revival of the 1972 film "The Ruling Class" while Imelda Staunton (English actress of stage and screen) took the award for best performance in a musical for her portrayal of Momma Rose in a revival of the 1959 Broadway musical of Arthur Laurents, "Gypsy.'
The other categories of the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards included the award for best play that went to the American playwright and director, Stephen Adly Guirgis, in "The Motherf**ker with the Hat" and the best director award went to the artistic director Robert Icke, for his revival of Aeschylus's trilogy of Greek tragedies "Oresteia".
The awards also gave the German theatre set and costume designer Anna Fleischle the best design for "Hangmen" while the British playwright Molly Davies, received the award for most promising playwright in 2014 Davies's play "God Bless the Child".
The emerging talent award in London Evening Standard Theatre Awards went to David Moorst, for his character in "Violence and Son" and the English actress Gemma Arterton got the newcomer in a musical award, for Arterton's musical theater debut in "Made in Dagenham."
The co-hosts of the event were actors Judi Dench and Ian McKellen along with the Russian-born British chairman and owner of Evening Standard Ltd, Evgeny Lebedev.
