Emilia joins our awards gala

Emilia Fox has a historical link with the Evening Standard Theatre Awards.

The 29-year-old actress, who describes the event as a "great day", can remember attending as a child - in the company of her actor father Edward Fox.

And on Monday she will take a break from rehearsals for her latest stage role, in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, to present the award for Best Stage Designer.

The nominees for Best Designer are: John Gunter for Love's Labour's Lost at the National; Christopher Oram for Caligula at the Donmar Warehouse; and Ultz for his designs for Fallout at the Royal Court and Hobson's Choice at the Young Vic.

Winning a coveted statuette can make a major success of any young designer, actor or playwright - as Stephen Poliakoff will testify. At the age of 23, he collected the Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright in 1976 for City Sugar, starring the late Adam Faith.

Now aged 50, he has become one of our most celebrated writers thanks to plays such as The Summer Party, Playing With Trains and Sweet Panic, which he also directed for its current run starring Jane Horrocks at the Duke of York's Theatre. He is also famous for films and feature-length TV dramas including BBC1's The Lost Prince.

Poliakoff will honour a new generation when he presents the playwright award on Monday. This year's nominees are Kwame Kwei-Armah for what judges called his "passionate, potent" writing in Elmina's Kitchen, Owen McCafferty for his "ambitious" Scenes From The Big Picture (both at the National Theatre), and Lucy Prebble for her "remarkable" first full-length play The Sugar Syndrome at the Royal Court.

Since 2000 the award comes with £30,000 jointly donated by Lord Rothermere, Chairman of the Daily Mail and General Trust and Anna Wintour - in memory of her father Charles Wintour, the former Evening Standard editor who instigated the Theatre Awards.

Poliakoff said: "It was an incredibly exciting and important award. I was following in famous playwrights' footsteps - Tom Stoppard had won it. It was also very showbiz - Rex Harrison was there. Susannah York was sitting next to me. I was trembling and she held my hand.

"The award was a great landmark - it catapulted people into feeling they had achieved something."

Of this year's nominees, he added: "They are three exciting young writers."

The awards take place at the Savoy on Monday and will be broadcast by Carlton on Wednesday at 11.30pm.