Belvoir’s The Jungle and the Sea was awarded Best Mainstage Production at the 2022 Sydney Theatre Awards ceremony held at Sydney’s Seymour Centre. The production also won Best New Australian Work (S. Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack), Best Ensemble and Best Original Score of a Mainstage Production (Arjunan Puveendran). The awards closely mirror those given to Belvoir’s production of Shakthidharan’s Counting and Cracking in 2020.

An audience of more than 500 attended the ceremony to celebrate a year in which Sydney’s live theatre sector returned to something resembling normal service after the disruptions of the global pandemic.

Sydney Theatre Awards Best Mainstage Production, The Jungle and the Sea, Belvoir, 2022. Photo © Sriram Jeyaraman

Thirty awards were presented, shared between 18 productions, which played on Sydney stages during 2022. Presenters included Liz Alexander, Amanda Buckworth, Nancye Hayes, Michelle Lim Davidson, David McAllister, Elise McCann, Steve Rodgers, Tobhiyah Stone Feller, Melanie Tait, Michael Tyack, Daryl Wallis, Elijah Williams and Darren Yap.

There were intra-award performances from Brittanie Shipway (from the new Australian musical The Dismissal) and by 34 of the cast of the 1987, 1997 and 2014 Australian tours...