Coinciding with this year’s Olivier Awards back in April, Jack Reitman, an Off-West End Award-winning actor and librettist, authored an open letter calling on the Society of London Theatre (SOLT), who organise the Laurence Olivier Awards, to introduce two new categories for the 2025 Awards: ‘Best Book of a Musical’ and ‘Best Score of a Musical’. This open letter has now been signed by over 300 industry professionals which shows the strength of support for widening the award categories and recognising the contributions of composers, librettists and lyricists.
The Olivier Awards’ American counterparts, the Tony Awards, has had the categories ‘Best Original Score’ and ‘Best Book of a Musical’ since the 1940s. These categories recognise that musicals are built upon their book (the ‘script’ of the musical – the song lyrics and any spoken dialogue) and their score (the music that is composed for the musical) and that they would not exist without them.
Like the industry professionals who have signed the open letter, I think that these categories should definitely be introduced into the Olivier Awards especially as the ‘Outstanding Musical Contribution’ is now limited to musical directors, arrangers and orchestrators. Therefore, composers and lyricists are not able to win any categories themselves and, whilst their names are mentioned if a musical wins ‘Best Musical’, this category takes much more than just the book and score into account.
The main argument against introducing these new categories into the Olivier Awards is that there are already other awards for music and literature. For example, the Brit Awards largely recognises British music so, theoretically, British musical composers could win in these. However, musicals, especially new stage musicals that do not have a film version, continue to attract a relatively niche audience. Even as a musical lover myself, there are plenty of new musicals which I don’t know very well at all, so it definitely seems unlikely that new musical scores would be nominated for the Brit Awards since they don’t tend to attract a mainstream audience.
When it comes to recognising the book of a musical, it is even more important for the Olivier Awards to add a new category because literature awards are highly unlikely to consider them within their categories. Moreover, British lyricists are unable to be nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, which has categories for lots of different types of writing, because only American citizens are able to win it which makes it even harder for their contributions to be recognised.
Already, the Olivier Awards have categories for lighting, choreography and sound design which shows that they are willing to recognise the hard work that happens behind the scenes in the West End. However, I think it is unfair that some behind the scenes roles are still not recognised properly. For example, why is there a choreography category but not a composition/score category when the role of a composer is very similar to a choreographer, with the main difference being that they are simply working with a different medium? Moreover, it takes both creativity and technical skill to write a successful book or score, and this talent and hard work should be recognised in these awards, especially as there would quite literally be no show without them!
Therefore, I hope that the SOLT takes Jack Reitman’s open letter seriously, especially as it has gained the support of lots of actors, directors, composers and lyricists. With any luck, the 2025 Olivier Awards will include categories for ‘Best Book’ and ‘Best Score’ which will give both emerging and established British writers and composers the chance to gain more recognition for their work.
