Little Bear, Ehrenreich, Salesman Win NYDCC Awards

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

Little Bear Ridge Road, Alden Ehrenreich of Becky Shaw, and the ensemble cast of Death of a Salesman were the winners of the 90th annual New York Drama Critics Circle Awards. The group opted to present no award for Best Musical. Costume designer Qween Jean, the playwright-director team of Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, and Lincoln Center Theater's revival of Ragtime were awarded special citations. The critics met on April 30 at the offices of Time Out New York to vote for their top choices of the 2025-26 NY theatrical season. The awards will be presented in a private ceremony on May 7 at 54 Below. 

Samuel D. Hunter's Little Bear Ridge Road which had a run on Broadway earlier in the season starring Laurie Metcalf and Micah Stock, was the critics' choice for Best Play. (Metcalf also currently stars in Death of a Salesman and both shows were directed by Joe Mantello.) The play concerns a lonely gay young man connecting with his alienated aunt after the death of his father. Hunter previously won the Circle's award for Best Play in 2022 for A Case for the Existence of God. On the first ballot, Little Bear received the most votes, but not enough of a majority to be declared a winner by the group's by-laws. Shawn's What We Did Before Our Moth Days and Talene Malone's Meet the Cartozians were the runners-up. After voting to give a Best Play award, the critics went to a third, weighted ballot with each member voting for their top three picks. With this ballot, the leading candidates were (in order) Little Bear Ridge Road, Meet the Cartozians, Robert Icke's adaptation of Oedipus, and Moth Days. There was scattered support for Giant, Prince Faggot, Mother Russia, The Balusters, Cold War Choir Practice, and Well, I'll Let You Go. But there were still not enough votes for a clear majority.

A fourth ballot was held with the group only voting for their top three choices of the four leaders on a weighted ballot. Little Bear emerged victorious. This award is accompanied by a cash prize of $2,500, made possible by a grant from the Lucille Lortel Foundation.

B'way Review: Little Bear Ridge Road

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

You would think Samuel D. Hunter would run out of ideas. Every one of his plays takes place in his native Idaho and usually features a gay man struggling with loneliness and finding his identity in a straight-dominated world. Yet all of his works I’ve seen Off-Broadway including The Whale, Pocatello, Greater Clements, A Case for the Existence of God, and Grangeville are uniquely individual and heartfelt. So it is with his Broadway debut, Little Bear Ridge Road at the Booth Theater after a successful run at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. We’re back in rural Idaho and the hero is an alienated, troubled gay young man, but his journey is specific to this compassionate, funny, tender piece.

Joe Mantello masterfully and subtly directs Laurie Metcalf and Micah Stock in two outstanding, compassionate performances in one of the best plays of the Broadway season so far. Scott Pask’s minimal setting accurately fulfills the description in the program: “A couch in a void.” We are in the home of Sarah (the magnificently curmudgeonly Metcalf), a cranky nurse on the titular isolated country road. She is reluctantly welcoming her estranged nephew Ethan (awkward and desolate Stock) after the death of Ethan’s father (her brother) so that the estate may be settled. Sarah and Ethan have both been damaged by life and are wary of each other. Sarah had a series of miscarriages and her partner Tony left her years ago and she is undergoing chemotherapy for rapidly advancing cancer. Ethan was rejected by his homophobic father, a meth addict, and he’s still recovering from a bad breakup in Seattle and his failed ambition to become a writer. Their shaky, tentative connection forms the action of the play as the two navigate the emotional minefield that lies between them. 

Off-B'way Review: Grangeville

Paul Sparks and Brian J. Smith in
Grangeville.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

Just as August Wilson centered most of his dramas of the African-American experience in his home city of Pittsburgh, Samuel D. Hunter has returned again and again to his native state of Idaho to chronicle the damaged lives of its residents and those who have left, but still nurse their hurts received there. Hunter has focused on the fraught relationships between queer and straight Idahoans in affecting dramas like Pocatello, The Whale, A Case for the Existence of God (winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award), and his latest, perhaps most searing play, Grangeville now at Signature Theater. 

We begin in total darkness, listening to the disembodied phone voices of two estranged half-brothers Jerry and Arnold (Paul Sparks and Brian J.Smith in riveting, heart-wrenching performances). As the conversation progresses and the lights gradually dim up, we learn that Jerry and Arnold have different fathers but the same mother who is in failing health (spot-on sound by Christopher Darbassie and lighting by Stacey Derosier). Truck driver Jerry has been caring for their mom in the titular town in Idaho, while artist Arnold is living in Rotterdam with his husband, a museum curator, and has not been in contact with the family for years. Jerry needs help dealing with Mom’s disorganized medical bills, but he also wants to re-establish relations with the younger Arnold. The attempts at reweaving the frayed bond between the half-siblings forms the thread of the play and Hunter sensitively explores the nature of family trauma and the need for forgiveness and coping with suffering.

Paul Sparks and Brian J. Smith in
Grangeville.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

Though Sparks and Smith are the only two actors, they also play each other’s partners in separate scenes. In what could have come across as a gimmick, the performers and director Jack Serio manage to make this difficult double casting work. Smith subtly plays Jerry’s ex-wife Tracy without descending into female caricature and Sparks takes on Arnold’s spouse, the Dutch Brom with surprising delicacy. But it is in their portraits of the two brothers that the pair are most shattering. Sparks compassionately limns Jerry’s guilt over physically abusing Arnold when they were kids and his earnest desire to make amends. He’s also particularly funny when Jerry tries to wraps his working-class mind around artistic concepts. Neither the playwright or the actor are condescending here. Smith taps into Arnold’s rage at the ill-treatment he received as a young gay man in a homophobic society and builds a careful scaffolding of icy reserve around this damaged soul. When that edifice comes crashing down and the siblings finally reach out to other figuratively and literally, it’s devastating.

Paul Sparks and Brian J. Smith in
Grangeville.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

In addition to the double-casting aspect, Sergio takes on the tricky task of the characters having to play scenes via cell phones and Zoom meetings. Jerry and Arnold only occupy the same actual space in the final scene. But Serio conquers this obstacle by having the actors relate to each other as if there were in physical proximity throughout. His understated direction and the spare set by the dots design team perfectly captures the blistering emotions evoked in Hunter’s tender two-hander.

Feb. 24—March 23. Signature Theater at the Pershing Square Signature Theater Center, 480 W. 42nd St., NYC. Running time: 90 mins. with no intermission. signaturetheater.org

The Sixth Annual David Desk Awards

Pocatello at Playwrights Horizons, winner of the David Desk Award
for one of the best plays of the 2014-15 season.

Now that the Tonys, Drama Desks, Lortels, Outer Critics, and Obies are over, I have made the choices for my own awards--the David Desks--for the best in NY theater, on or Off-Broadway. This is totally unofficial and all about my own preferences of everything I've seen for the season. Like the DDs, Broadway and Off-Broadway are together. The DDs have now stretched their categories from six to seven in some cases, and so have the Emmys. So I have too. You may see many repeats from the other awards but I have a few faves of my own including Samuel D. Hunter's Pocatello which had a relatively brief run at Playwrights Horizons. I was the only member of the NY Drama Critics Circle to vote for it for Best Play on the first ballot. The play deals with the lonely manager of a chain restaurant in the titular Idaho city. His story and those of his employees symbolize the struggle of most Americans with few marketable skills and a loss of community. I had also actually eaten in the Pocatello Ruby Tuesdays in the parking lot of the Best Western, similar to the play's Olive Garden. Rob McClure of the short-lived Honeymoon in Vegas was unfairly overlooked as well in the other awards.

So here they are the David Desks, enjoy, let me know if you love or hate them:   

Play

Airline Highway (Lisa D’Amour)

Between Riverside and Crazy (Stephen Adly Guirgis)

The City of Conversation (Anthony Giardina)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Simon Stephens)

Indian Ink (Tom Stoppard)

Pocatello (Samuel D. Hunter)

Wolf Hall, Parts One and Two (Mike Poulton)