Samuel D. Hunter’s Little Bear Ridge Street was named Greatest Play of the 2025-2026 season by the New York Drama Critics’ Circle tonight for the Broadway staging starring Laurie Metcalf and Micah Inventory, directed by Joe Mantello and produced by Scott Rudin and Barry Diller.
The award for Greatest Particular person Efficiency went to Alden Ehrenreich for his excellent Broadway debut in Gina Gionfriddo’s play Becky Shaw, a manufacturing of the non-profit Second Stage Theater firm directed by Journey Cullman.
And if there have been any doubts that Rudin, returning to New York’s theater panorama after a protracted hiatus following allegations of office bullying, has resumed his appreciable place of influence on Broadway and Off Broadway, tonight’s critics’ awards would possibly lay them to relaxation: Along with Little Bear Ridge Street, the Rudin-Diller produced Demise of a Salesman, headed by Metcalf and Nathan Lane and directed by Mantello, took the award for Greatest Ensemble Efficiency. (The revival’s forged additionally contains Christopher Abbott, Ben Ahlers, Okay. Todd Freeman, Jonathan Cake, Joaquin Consuelos and Jake Termine, amongst others.)
A 3rd Rudin-Diller manufacturing led to a particular quotation: Wallace Shawn and his longtime collaborator André Gregory had been honored for profession achievement. The actor/author and his director reteamed this season for the Off Broadway play What We Did Earlier than Our Moth Days, produced by Rudin and Diller.
Lauren Patten and Alden Ehrenreich, ‘Becky Shaw’
Marc J. Franklin
Particular Citations additionally had been awarded to Lincoln Middle Theater revival of Ragtime (which simply introduced an upcoming nationwide tour) and Qween Jean for the costume design of Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Liberation and Saturday Church.
No award was given for Greatest Musical.
The alternatives had been made on the group’s ninetieth annual voting assembly and might be introduced in a personal ceremony on Thursday, Might 7, together with a money prize of $2,500 for Greatest Play, made potential by a grant from the Lucille Lortel Basis.
Little Bear Ridge Street had its New York premiere on October 30, 2025, at Broadway’s Sales space Theatre. The play obtained its world premiere at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Firm on June 23, 2024. In a latest New Yorker profile, Metcalf said that she threatened to stop her longtime dwelling at Steppenwolf if the corporate didn’t enable Rudin to switch the play to Broadway.
Joshua Henry, Caissie Levy, Brandon Uranowitz and the corporate of ‘Ragtime’
Matthew Murphy
The New York Drama Critics’ Circle includes 22 drama critics from day by day newspapers, magazines, wire providers and web sites based mostly within the New York metropolitan space. The New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, which has been awarded yearly since 1936 to one of the best new play of the season (with non-compulsory awards for overseas or American performs, musicals and particular achievements), is the nation’s second-oldest playwriting award, after the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The forged of ‘Cats: The Jellicle Ball’ in costumes designed by Qween Jean
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
Adam Feldman, theater critic and editor for Time Out New York, has served as president of the NYDCC since 2005. Zachary Stewart of TheaterMania serves as vice chairman and treasurer. Different members embrace David Barbour, David Cote, Joe Dziemianowicz, Deadline’s Greg Evans, Rhoda Feng, David Finkle, Elysa Gardner, Robert Hofler, Sara Holdren, Charles Isherwood, Chris Jones, Soraya Nadia McDonald, Jackson McHenry, Emily Nussbaum, Johnny Oleksinski, Frank Scheck, David Sheward, Tim Teeman, Elisabeth Vincentelli and Matt Windman. Emeritus members embrace Melissa Rose Bernardo, Brian Scott Lipton, Michael Sommers and Steven Suskin.
Current Greatest Play winners embrace Objective, Stereophonic, Downstate, A Case for the Existence of God, Heroes of the Fourth Turning and The Ferryman. Current Greatest Musical winners embrace Useless Outlaw, Kimberly Akimbo, Unusual Loop and The Band’s Go to. The Circle additionally presents awards for Greatest Particular person Efficiency and Greatest Ensemble Efficiency, in addition to Particular Citations.
