Richard Hawley, Jodie Comer and Arlene Phillips were among the stars giving speeches at the Royal Albert Hall’s glitzy shindig
Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood takes the stage after a barnstorming opening number performed by host Hannah Waddingham:
Now we feel really boring just speaking – we wish we’d made a song up!
I’m having a brain … fart
Sheffield, we love you. Will you marry us?
To Anj [Anjana Vasan], the best stage wife any man could ever ask for, and Patsy [Ferran], you are an acting wizard
It would be remiss of me not to say, please, stand up and oppose what the government is doing with regards to asylum seekers. And if I wasn’t fasting, I’d probably say eff the Tories.
We should be paying our teachers – and not cutting the arts in schools
In a world where musical theatre was dominated by men there was I shouting out … so here I am in my 80th year, proud to see this changing
To this little bean, who was with me the whole time, from the start of rehearsals
We are reclaiming the power for those women
The world is only changed by the stories that are told about it … If we can’t find ourselves in those stories, if we don’t know where to look for them, if we can’t participate in their telling, we’re not just being denied access to art but being denied access to the world. And we might start thinking that the world isn’t for us and it is – it’s for all of us
