Nominees announced for final South Bank Show Awards

Published Thursday 7 January 2010 at 15:36 by Matthew Hemley

The Donmar Warehouse’s production of A Street Car Named Desire will go head to head with the Royal Court’s staging of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem in the theatre category of the last ever South Bank Show Awards later this month.

Rachel Weisz (Blanche Dubois) in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Donmar Warehouse will be up against the Royal Court's Jerusalem for a Southbank Show Award Photo: Tristram Kenton

The two will compete with The Habit of Art, written by Alan Bennett, which ran at the National Theatre.

Also nominated for the awards, which will take place on January 26 at The Dorchester in London, is Channel 4’s Red Riding, ITV’s Collision and BBC3’s Being Human, which are all up in the TV drama section.

Meanwhile, BBC2’s Home Time, E4’s The Inbetweeners and BBC2’s The Thick of It are up for best comedy.

Into the Little Hill/ Down by the Greenwood Side, which played at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio, the English National Opera’s production of Peter Grimes, and Glyndebourne’s The Fairy Queen are all nominated in the opera category, while Diversity, the dance troupe that won Britain’s Got Talent, will compete with E=mc2, a ballet by David Bintely, and Wayne McGregor’s Limen for the dance award.

Also at the ceremony, Ian McKellen will present the Times Breakthrough Award, which this year sees actors Carey Mulligan and Suranne Jones, and playwright Lucy Prebble, among the ten nominees.

Host of the awards, Melvyn Bragg, said: “These are the only awards in the world wholly devoted to the arts. They reflect the range covered by The South Bank Show over the years.”