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The New York Drama Critics’ Circle has named Samuel D. Hunter’s Little Bear Ridge Road Best Play of the 2025-26 season. No award was given for Best Musical.
The Circle bestowed the recently instituted awards of Best Individual Performance to Alden Ehrenreich of Becky Shaw and Best Ensemble Performance to the cast of Death of a Salesman.
Special Citations were awarded to: Lincoln Center Theater revival of Ragtime; Wallace Shawn and André Gregory for career achievement; and Qween Jean for the costume design of Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Liberation and Saturday Church.
The awards, which will be presented in a private ceremony on Thursday, May 7, include a cash prize of $2,500 for Best Play, made possible by a grant from the Lucille Lortel Foundation.
The selections were made at the organization’s 90th annual voting meeting at the offices of Time Out New York.
Little Bear Ridge Road, written by Samuel D. Hunter and directed by Joe Mantello, 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.
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.
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.
In addition to Feldman and Stewart, the members of the New York Drama Critics’ Circle are David Barbour, David Cote, Joe Dziemianowicz, 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.
For more information on the New York Drama Critics’ Circle, please visit www.dramacritics.org. A full breakdown of this year’s voting will be posted tonight on the organization’s website.
