Eddie Redmayne and Lily Allen win WhatsOnStage theatre awards

Eddie Redmayne, Lily Allen and James McAvoy were among the award winners at a ceremony to recognise the "brilliance and resilience" of British theatre.

Redmayne won the WhatsOnStage Award for best performer in a male-identifying role in a musical, for his part in the West End musical Cabaret.

Allen won best female-identifying role in a play for her theatre debut, while McAvoy won the male equivalent.

The categories have been renamed this year to make them "fully inclusive".

Redmayne earned rave reviews for playing the Emcee in the revival of Cabaret, although his casting also attracted criticism because the character is usually portrayed as gay or queer, which Redmayne is not.

His co-star in the show, Jessie Buckley, lost out in the female category to Carrie Hope Fletcher, the star of Andrew Lloyd Webber's new take on Cinderella.

Elsewhere, Allen is best-known as a singer but made the move into acting last year, as a woman who is convinced her house is haunted in 2:22 - A Ghost Story.

She won best performer in a female identifying role in a play, while her co-star, the former EastEnders actor Jake Wood, won best supporting performer in a male identifying role in a play. 2:22 - A Ghost Story was also named best new play.

McAvoy was crowned best performer in a male identifying role in a play for his take on Cyrano de Bergerac, which also won best play revival.

The awards were voted for by theatre audiences, and the musical adaptation of Disney's Frozen led the pack overall with seven prizes.

However, Back to the Future the Musical beat it to the title of best new musical, while Six the Musical won a separate prize for best West End show by just seven votes.

The 120-seat Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester won best regional production for Rent.

A full ceremony was not held last year, with 2020 the last time the best actor and actress category titles were used.

"The decision to change the titles of the acting categories is to represent everyone within in the theatre community - these are first steps as we evolve the awards in the coming years to truly make them fully inclusive," a WhatsOnStage spokesperson said.

And the change follows the Brit Awards merging their male and female awards to have an artist of the year prize instead.

This year's WhatsOnStage ceremony was held at London's Prince of Wales Theatre on Sunday.

"Today's awards are testament to the brilliance and resilience of an industry, who even in the bleakest moments of the past two years kept faith and kept going," WhatsOnStage's Sarah Coleman said.

"The breadth of talent honoured today - in the first major theatre awards to return in full post-pandemic - demonstrates that theatre is back, and then some."