Olivier hat-tricks for Giant, Fiddler and Benjamin Button

The play Giant, which depicts the children's author Roald Dahl amid an outcry about his antisemitism, has triumphed at the Olivier awards on a star-studded night at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

- Chris Wiegand

The US star John Lithgow took home the best actor prize for his performance as Dahl, Elliot Levey won best supporting actor (for playing his publisher Tom Maschler) and Mark Rosenblatt received the award for best new play.

Giant is Rosenblatt's debut as a playwright and brought him a double victory at the Critics' Circle theatre awards in March, where he won for most promising playwright and best new play. Giant ran last year at the Royal Court and will transfer to the West End this month, with Lithgow and Levey reprising their roles.

Lithgow thanked the audience for "welcoming me to England" and said: "It's not always easy when you welcome an American into your midst," highlighting that this moment was "more complicated than usual" for relations between the US and the UK.

He remembered seeing Laurence Olivier's "astounding performance" at the Old Vic in the play The Dance of Death in the late 1960s. "I have thought about him and stolen from him in just about every performance I have ever played on stage," he added.