NY Drama Critics Honor 'Once', 'Prophet', 'Tribes'

NEW YORK -- The New York Drama Critics Circle has named Stephen Karam's Sons of the Prophet, a bittersweet comedy-drama about a Lebanese-American family whose male offspring wrestle with big questions of life, love and pain, as best play of the season. 

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Produced by Roundabout Theatre Company, Karam's play had an extended Off Broadway run late last year.

The award for best foreign play went to British writer Nina Raine's Tribes, about a family of English intellectuals whose communication difficulties go far beyond their deaf son. That production is still running at the Barrow Street Theatre Off Broadway.

Top Tony contender Once was named best musical, adding further momentum to the awards-season favorite, written by Enda Walsh with music by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. The show was adapted from the hit Fox Searchlight movie of the same name.

Other productions that figured strongly in voting for the group's 77th annual awards included Richard Bean's One Man, Two Guvnors and Amy Herzog's 4000 Miles. Two of the season's most critically acclaimed Broadway plays, Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities and Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park, both were ineligible for the NYDCC's top prize, having been considered in previous seasons for their original Off Broadway runs.

The group awarded a special citation to Signature Theatre Company, which has radically expanded operations and playwright support programs this year in its new three-stage Frank Gehry-designed complex.

A special career achievement citation was awarded to veteran stage and film director Mike Nichols, currently represented on Broadway with his hit revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Linda Emond and Andrew Garfield.

The NYDCC awards will be presented May 14 at a cocktail reception at Angus McIndoe Restaurant in New York's theater district.