Exeunt’s Alternative Theatre Awards 2024

Earworms! Unlikely crushes! Sex scenes! Rip-off wine! Welcome to Exeunt’s glitzy, highly subjective, somewhat questionable celebration of a year of theatre-going

Much Ado About Nothing at The Globe. Photo: Marc Brenner

The Most Coveted Costume Award 

It’s a second year in a row for Grace Smart. Last year all I wanted, all I dreamt of, was Charley Pankhurst’s sparkly skull suit from Cowbois. This year you may or may not have caught be hanging around The Globe stage door, trying to snatch the devil horn bonnet with a darling bow from the Much Ado About Nothing costume rail.

Special commendation: Temi Wilkey’s pink dress in Main Character Energy. Absolutely lush. (Frank Peschier)

The King Ferdinand Award for Lisping

I once was teased for my lisp, but I was in sthsplendid company at Jamie Lloyd’s The Tempest. Sigourney Weaver as Prospero inexplicably had the kind of crackling, spitly lisp that would make you a fortune on ASMR TikTok, and it seemed to be infecting her whole island, too, with lines hissed into radio mics like snake charmers. This isle is full of noiseth, indeed! (Alice Saville)

The ‘This has got to be part of it, right?’ Award

Figs in Wigs’ blow-out meta-theatrical dissection of a life making experimental performance, Big Finish, had already stopped, in a sense. The show (spoilers) resolves with a fake-out ending, only to then stage a formal twist with a scripted ‘post-show discussion’ scene. When, mid-scene, our Q&A host had a furtive message whispered in his ear by a stage manager, he relayed the news that we had to stop the show and evacuate the theatre with such ease and confidence that I knew something deviously dramaturgical was afoot. A multi-layered coup de théatre! They’d even bothered to install an ambulance-like flashing blue light effect outside the entrance of BAC... no, wait, that's a real ambulance. It wasn’t until several minutes had passed, audience members started peeling off home and the Figs came out in their street clothes that I fully twigged that this was not, in fact, an elaborate artistic machination. (Ben Kulvichit)

Jeevan Braich as Rusty and Jaydon Vijn as Hydra in Starlight Express. Photo: Pamela Raith

Earworm of the Year Award – joint winners

Anyone who’s seen Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’s Six the Musical knows that they've got near magical powers when it comes to writing catchy songs. So why, then, did they so grossly misuse them on ‘There’s a Bee’ in their new show Why Am I So Single? Can I report them to some kind of musical theatre council? Because months later I still find myself singing their Queen-esque triumphantly stupid song about trying to get an insect out of the room, and it’s really bugging me. (Alice Saville)

“IT’S NOT A MATTER OF IF IT’S A MATTER OF WHEN FOOOOOOOR HY-DRO-GEN”. The attempt to imbue some logic into Starlight Express goes against its very moral, cultural fibre and is only excused by the catchiest refrain on the number ‘Hydrogen’ since Six’s “all you wanna do wanna do baby”. Bonus points if you whisper it sinisterly at opportune moments, completely devoid of context. (Frank Peschier)

The Award for the Most Exuberant Sex Scene Involving Piss Play