Conor McPherson play “The Night Alive” and Jeanine Tesori-Lisa Kron musical “Fun Home” took the 2013-14 awards for best play and musical, respectively, from the New York Drama Critics Circle.
Robert Schenkkan’s “All the Way,” currently on Broadway in the Tony-nommed production that stars Bryan Cranston, scored the award for American play. Special citations went to the Shakespeare Globe production of “Twelfth Night/Richard III,” which won raves and posted strong sales when it ran on the Rialto earlier this season, and to Richard Nelson and the cast of the Apple Family plays, the fourth and final title of which, “Regular Singing,” had a run at Off Broadway’s Public Theater this season.
With the Tony nominations launching the start of the Broadway awards frenzy last week, the NYDCC list suggests that Gotham’s critics, at least, preferred the Off Broadway season to the Rialto fare that is the sole focus of the Tonys.
According to the NYDCC’s awards regulations, if an American work wins the best play prize, the other play award will go to a play from abroad, whereas if a foreign play wins the big vote then the secondary title will go to an American show. “Night Alive” is penned by an Irish playwright and premiered last year in London, so the second award this year went an American show, “All the Way.”
“Night Alive” played an Off Broadway run that starred Ciaran Hinds at the Atlantic Theater Company. “Fun Home” — which last night won the top tuner prize at the Lucille Lortel Awards — had a run at the Public, and looks poised to return to New York as a commercial Broadway production.
