NEWS - ARCHIVE
Mercury gets TMA nomination for 3rd year
2 Oct 2009
The Mercury Theatre Company has been nominated for a TMA Theatre Award for Best New Play for The Lifesavers by Fraser Grace. This co-production between the Mercury Theatre Company and London’s Theatre503 was performed in Colchester and London in February and March this year and received outstanding reviews:
“The show marks the beginning of a partnership between Theatre 503 and Colchester’s Mercury Theatre, which looks set to be very fruitful indeed.” The Stage
“this is a gripping play” The Guardian
This is the third consecutive year that the Mercury Theatre Company has been nominated for a prestigious TMA (Theatre Management Association) award – in 2008 Roger Delves-Broughton was nominated for Best Supporting Performance in a Play for Journey’s End and in 2007 Chloe Lamford won the award for Best Set Design for Small Miracle.
Mercury Artistic Director, Dee Evans, particularly wanted to be involved in producing The Lifesavers, describing it as the best new play she had read since Jonathan Lichenstein’s The Pull of Negative Gravity which won awards for the Mercury Theatre Company at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and toured to New York.
Unlike most of the UK's prizes for theatre, the TMA Awards do not focus on London and the West End. They are the only nationwide awards for excellence in regional theatre. Nominations include the Royal Shakespeare Company, Chichester Festival Theatre and West Yorkshire Playhouse. The awards presentation will be held on Sunday 1 November 2009 at the Lyric Hammersmith. In considering the 14 awards categories more than 1,000 productions were seen by the panel of some 150 regular theatregoers from across the country. The Theatrical Management Association is a trade association that represents over 300 member organisations involved in the creation, presentation and management of professional theatre, opera and dance in the UK. Its annual awards were established in 1990.