'The Orphans' Home Cycle' wins best play
In this image released by Boneau/Bryan-Brown, Bill Heck, left, and Maggie Lacey are shown in a scene from the Signature Theatre Company production of Horton Foote's "The Orphans' Home Cycle," playing off-Broadway at the Signature's Peter Norton Space in New York. Credit: AP
"The Orphans' Home Cycle," Horton Foote's nine-play, 22-actor saga about generations of a rural Texas family, has won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best play.
No awards were given for best musical and best foreign play, an option when an American play gets the top award. After a lengthy meeting late Friday afternoon, it was clear that, despite passionate opinions, there was no consensus.
However, special citations were awarded to the annual summer Lincoln Center Festival for "visionary international programming," to actress Viola Davis (co-starring with Denzel Washington in "Fences") for "sustained achievement," and to emerging playwright Annie Baker for her two plays this season, "Circle Mirror Transformation" and "The Aliens."
Before he died at 92 in March 2009, Foote completed distilling nine full-length pre-existing plays into one-hour units to be presented over three days. The epic has been running since last November at Off-Broadway's Signature Theatre Company, where it is scheduled to close Saturday. Plans for a Broadway transfer never materialized.
The critics' circle, founded in 1935, is composed of 20 drama critics from daily newspapers, magazines, Internet and wire services in the metropolitan area. The awards will be presented May 10 at a ceremony at the Algonquin Hotel.
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