Olivier Awards’ Best Sound Design nominees announced

The nominees for the 2017 Olivier Award for Best Sound Design have been revealed.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has emerged as the undoubted frontrunner overall with 11 nominations across all categories – the most ever for a new play – and one of these was for Gareth Fry’s sound design work on the hit Palace Theatre show.

Like Fry, Paul Arditti is another former Olivier winner (for Billy Elliot in 2006 and Saint Joan in 2008) to make the 2017 list of Sound nominees, and has this year been recognised for his latest project: Amadeus at the National Theatre – Olivier.

Completing the quarter of finalists are Adam Cork (a 2011 winner with King Lear) for Travesties at Apollo Theatre and three-time nominee Nick Lidster of Autograph Sound, who carried out the sound design for Jesus Chris Superstar at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre.

The nominees were announced by Denise Gough and Matt Henry, who previously won the Olivier Award for Best Actress in the National Theatre’s production of People, Places and Things, and Best Actor in a Musical for playing Lola in Kinky Boots, respectively.

This year’s ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall on 9 April is set to be "the biggest yet," according to the organisers, and will for the first time feature a live broadcast from the red carpet, supported by Facebook, while ITV and Magic Radio have been confirmed as the broadcast partners in the UK.

Photo: Jesus Chris Superstar at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, which saw Lidster specify a Martin Audio MLA Compact loudspeaker system in an attempt to emulate the classic rock sound that had characterised the original album, featuring Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan in the lead role, 46 years ago (Credit: David Jensen)