Last night, the 2025 West End Wilma Awards took place at London’s Leicester Square Theatre and celebrated the best of UK theatre, giving out fifteen awards including new categories of Best Swing, Best Edinburgh Fringe Festival Show and Best Backstage Dresser.
Starlight Express won five awards including Best Off West End Show, Rising Star (Georgia Pemberton), Best Dresser (Zephyr Aspen), Best Lighting (Howard Hudson) and Best Performer in an Off West End Show (Jeevan Braich).
Choreographer Arlene Philips said “I first started working on Starlight Express in 1982 and it has been running somewhere in the world ever since including being in its 37th year in Bochum , Germany. Now we have it back in London and it is the best thing that could happen.“
Winners of the West End Wilma Awards, used their moment on stage to call for more diversity and recognition in theatre awards shows like this.
Winner of Best Understudy, Geri Allen, from Operation Mincemeat said “thank you so much to West End Wilma for actually having these categories because understudies, covers, swings are so unsung. The only time anyone talks about us if when you’ve had to travel 150 miles across the country to ‘save’ a show but actually we are saving it every day”
Best Dresser winner, Zephyr Aspen, for Starlight Express said “it’s nearly 2026 and we are only just starting to get categories like these. I think now is the time to really start putting pressure on people that do awards shows like these, to really diversify their categories. There are so many departments that go unsung and unrecognised and its really important because they are the life of the show. I urge you to start coming together to celebrate these unsung hero’s.”
Currently starring in the tour of Fawlty Towers The Play, Joanne Clifton presented the newly titled category of the ‘Robin Windsor Award For Best Performer in a Musical’ to Jamie Muscato (The Great Gatsby).
She said “As Robin’s close friend and dance partner I know that he would be so honoured that this award is to be given in his name. He loved theatre. He would go and see every show because he wanted to be inspired and he was. The theatre was his escapism and inspiration.”
The 10th years of the West End Wilma Awards will take place on Sunday 1 November 2026 at Leicester Square Theatre. Tickets are on sale now.
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