Mexodus and Prince Faggot Top Lortel List

Nygel D. Robinson and Brian Quijada  in Mexodus. 

Credit: Curtis Brown

Theater award season has officially begun with the announcement of the 41st annual Lucille Lortel Awards for excellence in Off and Off-Off-Broadway theater on April 1. Amber Gray and Harvey Guillén currently starring in The Rocky Horror Show made the announcement from Sardi's. The awards will be presented on May 3 at NYU Skirball. The musical Mexodus, which opened at the Minetta Lane earlier this season and is now playing a second engagement at the Daryl Roth Theater, lead the nominations with nine including for Outstanding Musical. Prince Faggot by Jordan Tannahill, which opened at Playwrights Horizons and later played the Seaview Studio, received the most nominations for a play with six. The Lortel  nominating committee saw 98 Off-Broadway shows in the 2025–2026 season, with 41 receiving nominations. The Outer Critics, Drama League, Drama Desk and Tonys nominations will soon follow.

A complete list of Lortel nominees follows:

Outstanding Play

Cold War Choir Practice, by Ro Reddick
Kyoto, by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson
THE MONSTERS, by Ngozi Anyanwu
Mother Russia,by Lauren Yee
Prince Faggot, by Jordan Tannahill

Outstanding Musical
BIGFOOT!, book by Amber Ruffin and Kevin Sciretta, lyrics by Amber Ruffin, music by David Schmoll and Amber Ruffin
Mexodus, by Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson
My Joy Is Heavy, by The Bengsons
Night Side Songs, words and music by The Lazours
Saturday Church, book and additional Lyrics by Damon Cardasis and James Ijames, music by Sia, additional music by Honey Dijon

Book Review: Severance

(Bought at Barnes and Noble full price): Ling Ma must be psychic or something. Her novel Severance was published in 2018, two years before the COVID pandemic and three years before the Apple TV series (unrelated) of the same name aired. Yet, she accurately predicted a worldwide wave of disease would originate in China and the spread and disrupt life as we know it. The consequences of Ma's fictional plague are much worse than the actual COVID disaster. As in many previous post-apocalyptic novels, only a few survive and band together. But what differentiates Severance from most other end-of-the-world works is it compares the pre and post catastrophe worlds. The main character is Candace Chen, a Chinese-American office worker drifting through her life. Chapters on her world before and after the pandemic alternate. But in both she has to deal with office-like hierarchies. In her job as a publishing production manager in charge of bibles, she comes up against patriarchal bosses and soul-crushing routines. In the after times, she submits to an oppressive male leader who guides their group of survivors through a dangerous nightmarescape full of zombie-like victims of the fever. Well, they're not brain-eaters like in the Walking Dead.

Anyway, Ma masterfully depicts Candace's two realities and her struggles to realize her full potential. The scenes describing New York as the fever takes over were strikingly real, reminding me of what Gotham was like during COVID--an empty Times Square, shuttered Broadway theaters, deserted office buildings. There are also insights into the immigrant experience and searching for your vocation. Candace emerges as a confused heroine always unsure of her next step, until she is forced to make a choice. As in The Secret History which I finished just before this one, I could not put the book down because I had to find out what happens next.