Purpose and Maybe Happy Ending Win New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards

The New York Drama Critics’ Circle has named Purpose by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins the best play of the year, just hours after it won the Pulitzer Prize. The drama is about the Jaspers, a politically influential Black American family on the verge of a crack-up. TheaterMania’s critic wrote that the play, “seems destined to take its place among the greatest American dramas of all time.”

The Circle also voted to give its Best Musical award to Hue Park and Will Aronson’s Maybe Happy Ending, which was recently nominated for 10 Tony Awards. It’s about two retired helper-bots in South Korea who go on a great adventure and fall in love. TheaterMania’s critic called it “refreshingly original.”

For the first time since 1962, the Circle voted on two new competitive awards: Best Individual Performance and Best Ensemble.

Andrew Scott won the Best Individual Performance category for his solo performance in Vanya, beating out Cole Escola, Sarah Snook, Jasmine Amy Rogers, and Audra McDonald in multiple rounds of voting. TheaterMania’s critic called his performance, “a bewitching collaboration between actor and audience, storytelling that seems to skate effortlessly on a frozen lake of shared imagination.”

The Best Ensemble Performance award will go to cast of Bess Wohl’s Liberation, about a women’s liberation group in 1970s Ohio. Of the cast, TheaterMania’s critic observed, “Their individual main character energy makes each the star of her own narrative, even if she is not the star of this play.”

The Circle also awarded special citations to Cole Escola for Oh, Mary!, the radical Andrew Lloyd Webber revival Cats: The Jellicle Ball, and David Greenspan for lifetime achievement.

The awards will be presented at a private ceremony on May 15.