The 15th Annual David Desk Awards

Laurie Metcalf and Micah Stock
in Little Bear Ridge Road.
Credit: Julieta Cervantes

The 2025-26 theater season is now over and that means it's time for the 15th annual David Desk Awards with my choices for the best onstage in NYC theater out of everything I've seen in the past twelve months. Shows like Cats: The Jellicle Ball and Libertation are not included because I considered them last year for their Off-Broadway runs. I categorize Masquerade, the immersive version of Phantom of the Opera as both a revival and a Unique Theatrical Experience. 

Play:
The Balusters (David Lindsay-Abaire)
Cold War Choir Practice (Ro Reddick)
Giant (Mark Rosenblatt)
Kyoto (Joe Murphy, Joe Robertson)
Little Bear Ridge Road (Samuel D. Hunter)
Meet the Cartozians (Talene Monahon)
Prince Faggot (Jordan Tannahill)
Punch (James Graham)

Musical:

The Lost Boys

Mexodus

My Joy Is Heavy

Saturday Church

Schmigadoon!

Revival of a Play:

Becky Shaw

Bug

Death of a Salesman

Galas

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone

You Got Older

Revival of a Musical:

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

The Baker’s Wife

The Gospel at Colonus

Masquerade

Ragtime

The Rocky Horror Show

Actor in a Play:

Jon Bernthal, Dog Day Afternoon

Will Harrison, Punch

John Krasinski, Angry Alan

Stephen Kunken, Kyoto

Nathan Lane, Death of a Salesman

John Lithgow, Giant

Okieriete Onaodowan, The Monsters

Micah Stock, Little Bear Ridge Road

Mark Strong, Oedipus

Actress in a Play:

Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Well, I’ll Let You Go

Carrie Coon, Bug

Lesley Manville, Oedipus

Laurie Metcalf, Little Bear Ridge Road

Aigner Mizzelle, The Monsters

Alia Shawkat, You Got Older

Actor in a Musical:

LJ Benet, The Lost Boys

Alex Brightman, Schmigadoon!

Nicholas Christopher, Chess

Luke Evans, The Rocky Horror Show

Joshua Henry, Ragtime

Actress in a Musical:

Abigail Bengson, My Joy Is Heavy

Sara Chase, Schmigadoon!

Caissie Levy, Ragtime

Marla Mindelle, Titanique

The 14th Annual David Desk Awards

Operation Mincemeat deserved better
in this season's award-giving, IMHO.
Credit: Julieta Cervantes

The Tonys, Drama Desks, NY Drama Critics Circle, Outer Critics, etc. are all long over. So it is time to deliver my own accolades with my choices for the best of the 2024-25 Broadway and Off-Broadway season. I was not as enamored with Maybe Happy Ending as all the major theater awards. Operation Mincemeat got my vote for Best Musical but Happy Ending won everything in spite of my opposition. I also felt Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends, Smash and We Had a World were unfairly overlooked for nominations.

Outstanding Play
The Antiquities, Jordan Harrison
Grangeville, Samuel D. Hunter
The Hills of California, Jez Butterworth
Liberation, Bess Wohl
Purpose, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Vladimir, Erika Sheffer
We Had a World, Joshua Harmon

Outstanding Musical

The Big Gay Jamboree

Death Becomes Her

Operation Mincemeat

Smash

Outstanding Revival of a Play

Eureka Day

A Streetcar Named Desire

Yellow Face

Outstanding Revival of a Musical

Cats: The Jellicle Ball

Gypsy

Sunset Blvd.

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Play

George Clooney, Good Night and Good Luck

Adam Driver, Hold On to Me Darling

Jon Michael Hill, Purpose

Louis McCartney, Stranger Things: The First Shadow

Paul Mescal, A Streetcar Named Desire

Paul Sparks, Grangeville

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Play

Laura Donnelly, The Hills of California

Francesca Faridany, Vladimir

Patsy Ferran, A Streetcar Named Desire

Lily Rabe, Ghosts

Jeanine Serralles, We Had a World

The 12th Annual David Desk Awards

Theater award season is over and I've summed up almost all the major theater awards. Now it's time for the David Desk Awards, my own personal choices for the best of the Broadway and Off-Broadway season. We had to skip a year due to the COVID shutdown in 2021. Not included are shows with Off-Broadway runs in previous seasons such as The Lehman Trilogy and Girl from the North Country. I've listed my favorites in multiple categories and they are all winners:

Will Brill and Kyle Beltran in
A Case for the Existence of God
Credit: Emilio Madrid

Play:

A Case for the Existence of God (Samuel D. Hunter)

English (Sanaz Toossi)

On Sugarland (Aleasha Harris)

Pass Over (Antoinette Chinoye Nwandu)

The Minutes (Tracey Letts)

Thoughts of a Colored Man (Keenan Scott II)

Musical:

Harmony

Intimate Apparel

Kimberly Akimbo

Mr. Saturday Night

Mrs. Doubtfire

Suffs

Revival of a Play:

for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

How I Learned to Drive

Take Me Out

Trouble in Mind

The revival of Company announced 
a closing date of July 31, despite winning
7 David Desk Awards
Credit: Matthew Murphy

Revival of a Musical:

Assassins

Caroline, or Change

Company

The Music Man

The Eleventh Annual David Desk Awards, plus Thoughts on B'way Reopening

Today normally would have been one of the best days of the year, Tony Award Day! But because of

the COVID-19 pandemic, Broadway theaters have been shut down since March 12 and are not likely to

reopen until January 2021 at the earliest. In a May 25 interview with Tim Teeman of the Daily Beast, Broadway League president Charlotte St. Martin was cautiously optimistic about the Main Stem lights being relit. But she stressed social distancing and playing to half-empty housing would not fit with the Broadway economic model which requires packing in as many bodies as possible for maximum profit. A few shows such as Plaza Suite, MJ: The Michael Jackson Musical and 1776 have announced opening dates for the spring of 2021, but those may be aspirational like Trump saying he wanted packed churches on Easter.

Without a vaccine or even treatment for the coronavirus, theatergoers will probably be reluctant to return. What would Broadway look like without a vaccine? It might mean closing the entire Times Square area off from cars so that the side streets from 42nd to 50th could be used for long lines of patrons to get their temperatures checked and handed face masks as well having their bags searched. (The latter practice started just a few years ago in the wake of various terrorist threats.) Getting into the theater could become just as time-consuming as going to the airport with patrons making sure to show up two-to-three hours before curtain time.

The Tenth Annual David Desk Awards

Paul Alexander Nolan and Teyonah Parris in Slave Play.
Credit: Joan Marcus

We're well into the summer and I've finally gotten around to posting the winners of the 10th annual David Desk Awards for excellence in Broadway and Off-Broadway theater for the 2018-19 season. Slave Play, one of my choices for Best Play, had a run at New York Theater Workshop and is transferring to a limited 17-week Broadway run at the Golden Theater with previews beginning Sept. 10, and opening Oct. 6. At 30, playwright Jeremy O. Harris will be the youngest black male dramatist to make his Broadway debut. How will Broadway audiences take this dangerous, risky work which boldly faces racial tensions and anger in unconventional ways. It's not a safe, comfortable melodrama like last season's American Son. It's not British and loaded with snob appeal like The Ferryman which was a magnificent show, but since it dealt with Irish people and their problems, rich white Yankee liberals did not have to face their own prejudices and national dilemmas.

But to the matter at hand, here are my picks for the tops of the last season: 

Play

Fairview (Jackie Sibblies Drury)

The Ferryman (Jez Butterworth)

The Lehman Trilogy (Stefano Massini, translated by Ben Power)

Mary Page Marlowe (Tracey Letts)

Slave Play (Jeremy O. Harris)

What the Constitution Means to Me (Heidi Schreck)

Musical

The Prom

Tootsie

Twelfth Night

The Ninth Annual David Desk Awards

Barrett Wilbert Weed, Erika Henningsen,
and Grey Henson in Mean Girls
Credit: Joan Marcus

It's time once again for the annual David Desk Awards for outstanding work on and Off-Broadway--actually it's way past time since the Tonys, Drama Desks, and Obies were handed out a month ago. But I have been busy with finishing my first full year as a teacher and attending graduate school classes. 

There is some overlap with my accolades and the better-known theater prizes, but some significant differences. Both the Drama Desks and Outer Critics lauded such mediocre musicals as Desperate Measures and SpongeBob SquarePants since The Band's Visit, the big winner at the Tonys, was ineligible because of its Off-Broadway run in 2016-17. The Tonys consider only Broadway shows, while the DDs and OCCs combine on and Off-Broadway, so Band's Visit was part of last season's candidates, winning Outstanding Music and Lyrics and Director of a Musical at the Drama Desks and Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical and Score from the Outer Critics.

As a result of Band's Visit's absence, I only had one new musical in my list for the top--Mean Girls--which I think was unfairly overlooked by many awards. Tina Fey did win the Outstanding Book from the DD and OCC, but I think it should have won score from both groups. The New York Drama Critics Circle voted to give no Outstanding Musical award at all.

I also included many fine performances which were totally snubbed in other circles such as the always sterling Zach Grenier as a complex Communist commander in Describe the Night, Mark-Linn Baker as a hamster-loving mental patient in Good for Otto, and Seth Numrich's athletic Dadaist in Travesties. The compete list of the 2017-18 David Desks follows:

The Eighth Annual David Desk Awards

Annaleigh Ashford and Jake Gyllenhaal in
Sunday in the Park with George
Credit: Matthew Murphy

The Tonys, Drama Desks, Outer Critics, Lortels, Obies and all those other theatre awards have been handed out long ago. Now it's time for the Eighth Annual David Desks, the high points from the past theater season on and Off-Broadway. Unlike the Tonys, Drama Desks and OCC, I am including Sunday in the Park with George. The producers of the Sondheim revival declared the show ineligible for all theater accolades because their run was so short and they did not wish to give comp tickets to the various voters which would eat into their profit margin. Since I am the sole judge of these awards and I saw the show, I am free to include it. I have tried to limit the number of honorees in each category to six, but there are a few instances where I have stretched it to seven, just like the Emmys. The Drama Desks have also not been strict about the number of nominees in the categories. In previous years, they ballooned to as many as seven and this year, some were only five and some six. Like the DDs and OCCs, I considered Dear Evan Hansen last season for its Off-Broadway run. Among the honorees who were largely ignored by the other award dispensers are Annette O'Toole in Tracey Letts' Man from Nebraska, cast members from Hadestown, and Janet McTeer, brilliant as always in Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

Play

The Antipodes (Annie Baker)

A Doll’s House, Part 2 (Lucas Hnath)

Indecent (Paula Vogel)

Man from Nebraska (Tracey Letts)

Oslo (J.T. Rogers)

Sweat (Lynn Nottage)

Vietgone (Qui Nguyen)

Musical

The Band’s Visit

Bandstand

Come from Away

Groundhog Day

Hadestown