Samuel D. Hunter’s Little Bear Ridge Road was named Best Play of the 2025-2026 season by the New York Drama Critics’ Circle tonight for the Broadway staging starring Laurie Metcalf and Micah Stock, directed by Joe Mantello and produced by Scott Rudin and Barry Diller.
The award for Best Individual Performance went to Alden Ehrenreich for his outstanding Broadway debut in Gina Gionfriddo’s play Becky Shaw, a production of the non-profit Second Stage Theater company.
And if there were any doubts that Rudin, returning to New York’s theater landscape after a prolonged hiatus following allegations of workplace bullying, has resumed his considerable place of impact on Broadway and Off Broadway, tonight’s critics’ awards might lay them to rest: In addition to Little Bear Ridge Road, the Rudin-Diller produced Death of a Salesman, headed by Metcalf and Nathan Lane and directed by Mantello, took the award for Best Ensemble Performance. (The revival’s cast also includes Christopher Abbott, Ben Ahlers, K. Todd Freeman, Jonathan Cake, Joaquin Consuelos and Jake Termine, among others.)
A third Rudin-Diller production led to a special citation: Wallace Shawn and his longtime collaborator André Gregory were honored for career achievement. The actor/writer and his director reteamed this season for the Off Broadway play What We Did Before Our Moth Days, produced by Rudin and Diller.
Lauren Patten and Alden Ehrenreich, ‘Becky Shaw’
Marc J. Franklin
Special Citations also were awarded to Lincoln Center Theater revival of Ragtime (which just announced an upcoming national tour) and Qween Jean for the costume design of Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Liberation and Saturday Church.
No award was given for Best Musical.
The selections were made at the organization’s 90th annual voting meeting and will be presented in a private ceremony on Thursday, May 7, including a cash prize of $2,500 for Best Play, made possible by a grant from the Lucille Lortel Foundation.
Little Bear Ridge Road had its New York premiere on October 30, 2025, at Broadway’s Booth Theatre. The play received its world premiere at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company on June 23, 2024. In a recent New Yorker profile, Metcalf stated that she threatened to quit her longtime home at Steppenwolf if the company did not allow Rudin to transfer the play to Broadway.
Joshua Henry, Caissie Levy, Brandon Uranowitz and the company of ‘Ragtime’
Matthew Murphy
The New York Drama Critics’ Circle comprises 22 drama critics from daily newspapers, magazines, wire services and websites based in the New York metropolitan area. The New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, which has been awarded every year since 1936 to the best new play of the season (with optional awards for foreign or American plays, musicals and special achievements), is the nation’s second-oldest playwriting award, after the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The cast 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 president and treasurer. Other members include 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 include Melissa Rose Bernardo, Brian Scott Lipton, Michael Sommers and Steven Suskin.
Recent Best Play winners include Purpose, Stereophonic, Downstate, A Case for the Existence of God, Heroes of the Fourth Turning and The Ferryman. Recent Best Musical winners include Dead Outlaw, Kimberly Akimbo, Strange Loop and The Band’s Visit. The Circle also presents awards for Best Individual Performance and Best Ensemble Performance, as well as Special Citations.
