The
Tony AwardThe Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Awards, recognize achievement in live American theatre and are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are for Broadway productions and...
for Best Play (formally, the
Antoinette Perry Antoinette Perry , was an actress, director, and co-founder of the American Theatre Wing. The Tony Awards are her namesake....
Award for Excellence in Theatre) is an annual award celebrating achievements in live
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
theatreTheatre is a branch of the performing arts. While any performance may be considered theatre, as a performing art, it focuses almost exclusively on live performers creating a self contained drama. A performance qualifies as dramatic by creating a representational illusion...
, including
musical theatreMusical theatre is a form of theatre combining music, songs, spoken dialogue and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
, honoring productions on
BroadwayBroadway Theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, is the theatre associated with the 40 large professional theaters with 500 seats or more located in the Theatre District, New York in Manhattan, New York City...
in
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
.
There was no award in the Tony's first year.
All My SonsAll My Sons is a 1947 play by Arthur Miller. The play was twice adapted for film; in 1948, and again in 1986.The play, which opened on Broadway at the Coronet Theatre in New York City on January 29, 1947, closed on November 8, 1947 and ran for 328 performances, was awarded the 1947 Tony Award for...
has been incorrectly categorized as the Best Play of 1947, but it won the Best Author award for Arthur Miller. The following year
Mister RobertsMister Roberts is a 1948 Tony Award-winning play based on the 1946 Thomas Heggen novel of the same name.The novel began as a collection of short stories about Heggen's experiences aboard the USS Virgo in the South Pacific during World War II...
received the first Tony Award as Best Play. Authors and the producers are presented with the award.
1950s
- 1950: The Cocktail Party
The Cocktail Party is a play by T. S. Eliot. Elements of the play are based on Alcestis, by the Ancient Greek playwright Euripides. The play was the most popular of Eliot's seven plays in his lifetime, although his 1935 play, Murder in the Cathedral, is better remembered today.The Cocktail Party...
- 1951: The Rose Tattoo
The Rose Tattoo is a Tennessee Williams play. It opened on Broadway in February 1951, and a film adaptation was released in 1955. It tells the story of an Italian-American widow in Louisiana who has allowed herself to withdraw from the world after her husband's death, and expects her daughter to...
- 1952: The Fourposter
The Fourposter is a 1951 play written by Jan de Hartog. The two-character story spans thirty-five years, from 1890 to 1925, as it focuses on the trials and tribulations, laughters and sorrows, and hopes and disappointments experienced by Agnes and George throughout their marriage...
- 1953: The Crucible
The Crucible is a 1953 play by Arthur Miller. It is a dramatization of the Salem witchcraft trials that took place in Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as a response to McCarthyism, when the US government blacklisted accused communists...
- 1954: The Teahouse of the August Moon
The Teahouse of the August Moon is a 1953 play written by John Patrick adapted from the 1951 novel by Vern Sneider. It was later adapted for film in 1956, and the 1970 Broadway musical, Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen.-Plot Summary:...
- 1955: The Desperate Hours
The Desperate Hours is a 1955 play by Joseph Hayes, based on his 1954 thriller novel of the same title. The story, about three escaped convicts, was the basis for the films The Desperate Hours in 1955 and Desperate Hours in 1990....
- 1956: The Diary of Anne Frank
The Diary of Anne Frank is a stage adaptation of the book The Diary of a Young Girl. The play is a dramatisation by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. It opened at the Cort Theatre, Broadway, on October 5, 1955, in a production by Kermit Bloomgarden, directed by Garson Kanin and designed by Boris...
- Bus Stop
Bus Stop is a 1955 play by William Inge. The film of the same name is only loosely based upon it.-Characters:Bus Stop is a drama, with romantic and some comedic elements. It is set in a diner in rural Kansas, about 20 miles west of Kansas City, Missouri during a snowstorm from which bus...
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955, has been restaged several times since, and was adapted into an acclaimed 1958 motion picture.-Plot:...
- Tiger at the Gates
- The Chalk Garden
The Chalk Garden is a play by Enid Bagnold that premiered in 1955 on Broadway. The play tells the story of Mrs. St Maugham and her granddaughter Laurel, a disturbed child under Miss Madrigal's care. The setting of the play was inspired by Bagnold's own garden at North End House in Rottingdean, near...
- 1957: Long Day's Journey Into Night
Long Day's Journey Into Night is a 1956 drama in four acts written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. The play is widely considered to be his masterwork...
- Separate Tables
Separate Tables is the collective name of two one-act plays written by Sir Terence Rattigan, both taking place in the Beauregard Private Hotel, Bournemouth, a seaside town on the south coast of England. The first play, entitled "Table by the Window", focuses on the troubled relationship between a...
- The Potting Shed
The Potting Shed is a play by Graham Greene. The psychological drama centers on a secret held by the Callifer family for nearly thirty years....
- The Waltz of the Toreadors
The Waltz of the Toreadors is a play by Jean Anouilh.Written in 1952, the farcical comedy is set in 1910 France and centres on General Leon Saint-Pé and his infatuation with Ghislaine, a woman with whom he danced nearly two decades earlier. Because of the general's commitment to his marriage, the...
- 1958: Sunrise at Campobello
Sunrise at Campobello is a 1958 play by American producer and writer Dore Schary based on U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's struggle with polio. The film version was released in 1960.-Background:...
- The Rope Dancers
- Two for the Seesaw
Two for the Seesaw is a 1962 romance-drama film, directed by Robert Wise and starring Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine. It was adapted from a Broadway play of the same name, written by William Gibson.-Plot summary:...
- Time Remembered
- The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs is a 1957 play by William Inge about family conflicts during the early 1920s in a small town near Oklahoma City. It won a Tony Award for Best Play and was made into a film in 1960.-Plot:...
- Look Back in Anger
Look Back in Anger is a John Osborne play and 1958 movie about a love triangle involving an intelligent but disaffected young man , his upper-middle-class, impassive wife , and her haughty best friend . Cliff, an amiable Welsh lodger, attempts to keep the peace...
- Look Homeward, Angel
Look Homeward, Angel is an acclaimed 1957 stage play by the playwright Ketti Frings. It opened on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre November 28, 1957, and ran for a total of 564 performances, closing on April 4, 1959....
- Romanoff and Juliet
Romanoff and Juliet is a play by Peter Ustinov. A comic spoof of the Cold War, it is set in the small mythical mid-European country of Concordia, whose leader is wooed by the United States and the Soviet Union, each one wanting him as an ally. Russia's ambassador, a member of the Romanoff family,...
- 1959: J.B.
- A Touch of the Poet
A Touch of the Poet is a play by Eugene O'Neill.It and its sequel, More Stately Mansions, were intended to be part of a nine-play cycle entitled A Tale of Possessors Self-Dispossessed...
- Epitaph for George Dillon
Epitaph for George Dillon is an early John Osborne play, one of two he wrote in collaboration with Anthony Creighton . It was written before Look Back in Anger, the play which made Osborne’s career, but opened a year after in Oxford in 1957 and moved to London’s Royal Court theatre, where Look...
- The Disenchanted
- The Visit
The Visit is a 1956 tragicomedy by the Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt. It is probably the best known of his works in the English-speaking world, particularly due to its frequent study in German A-Level and Higher courses...
1960s
- 1960: The Miracle Worker
The Miracle Worker is a three-act play by William Gibson adapted from his 1957 Playhouse 90 teleplay of the same name. It is based on Helen Keller's autobiography The Story of My Life....
- A Raisin in the Sun
A Raisin in the Sun is a play by Lorraine Hansberry that debuted on Broadway in 1959. The title comes from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes. The story is based upon a black family's experiences in the Washington Park Subdivision of Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood...
- The Best Man
The Best Man is a 1960 play by American playwright Gore Vidal. The play premiered on Broadway at the Morosco Theatre on 31 March 1960 where it ran for 520 performances before closing on 8 July 1961....
- The Tenth Man
The Tenth Man is a short novel by British novelist Graham Greene. There are two other works with the same title, both plays—one by Paddy Chayefsky and one by W. Somerset Maugham, plus a 1936 movie based on the Maugham play that was also broadcast in 1970 on BBC Radio 4...
- Toys in the Attic
Toys in the Attic is a play by Lillian Hellman.Set in New Orleans following the Great Depression, it focuses on the Berniers sisters, two spinsters nearing middle age who have sacrificed their own ambitions to look after their ne'er-do-well younger brother Julian, whose grandiose dreams repeatedly...
- 1961: Becket
Becket or The Honor of God is a Tony Award-winning play written in French by Jean Anouilh. It is a depiction of the conflict between Thomas Becket and King Henry II of England leading to Becket's murder in 1170...
- All the Way Home
All the Way Home is a 1960 play written by American playwright Tad Mosel, adapted from the from the 1957 James Agee novel, A Death in the Family. Both authors received the Pulitzer Prize for their separate works....
- The Devil's Advocate
- The Hostage
The Hostage is a loose 1958 English version, with songs, adapted in a much longer text from a one-act Irish language Gaelic play An Giall, by its author, Brendan Behan.-Plot:...
- 1962: A Man for All Seasons
A Man for All Seasons is a play by Robert Bolt. An early form of the play had been written for BBC Radio in 1954, but after Bolt's success with The Flowering Cherry, he reworked it for the stage....
- Gideon
Gideon, a play by Paddy Chayefsky, is a seriocomic treatment of the story of Gideon, a judge in the Old Testament. The play had a successful Broadway run in 1961 and was broadcast on NBC in 1971 as a Hallmark Hall of Fame special.-The story:...
- The Caretaker
The Caretaker is a play by Harold Pinter. It was first published by both Encore Publishing and Eyre Methuen in 1960. The sixth play that Pinter wrote for stage or television production, it was his first significant commercial success...
- The Night of the Iguana
The Night of the Iguana is a stageplay written by American author Tennessee Williams. Based on Williams' 1948 short story, the play premiered on Broadway in 1961. Two film adaptations have been made, including the Academy Award-winning 1964 film of the same name.-Plot:In 1940s Mexico, an...
- 1963: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee that opened on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theater on October 13, 1962. The original cast featured Uta Hagen as Martha, Arthur Hill as George, Melinda Dillon as Honey and George Grizzard as Nick. It was directed by Alan Schneider...
- A Thousand Clowns
A Thousand Clowns is a 1965 film which tells the story of a young boy who lives with his eccentric uncle Murray, who is forced to conform to society in order to keep custody of the boy. The movie was adapted by Herb Gardner from his 1962 play, and directed by Fred Coe...
- Mother Courage and Her Children
Mother Courage and Her Children is a play written in 1939 by the German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht with significant contributions from Margarete Steffin...
- Tchin-Tchin
Tchin-Tchin is a 1962 play written by Sidney Michaels. It opened on Broadway at the Plymouth Theatre, on October 25, 1962 and closed on May 18, 1963 after 222 performances and 3 previews. Directed by Peter Glenville, the play starred Margaret Leighton and Anthony Quinn, and featured Charles Grodin...
- 1964: Luther
Luther is a 1961 play by John Osborne that explored the forces that were involved in the life of Martin Luther, one of the instigators of the Protestant Reformation. Osborne was influenced by Erik Erikson's book, Young Man Luther, which had been published three years prior in 1958. In the play,...
- The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
-Synopsis:The Ballad of the Sad Café, by Carson McCullers , opens on the set of a small town in Georgia. The reader is introduced to Miss Amelia, an independent, lonely woman who owns a small store. On this particular ds Cousin Lymon. Cousin Lymon, despite being a hunchback with rude mannerisms,...
- Barefoot in the Park
- Characters :* Corie Bratter* Telephone Man* Paul Bratter* Mrs. Banks* Victor Velasco* Delivery Man- Act Summaries :Place: Top-floor Apartment in a Brownstone on East Forty-eight Street, New York City...
- Dylan
- 1965: The Subject Was Roses
The Subject Was Roses is a Pulitzer Prize-winning 1964 play written by Frank D. Gilroy, who also adapted the work in 1968 for film with the same title.-Background:...
- Luv
Luv is a play by Murray Schisgal.A mix of absurdist humor and traditional Broadway comedy more in the Neil Simon vein, Luv concerns two college friends - misfit Harry and materialistic Milt - who are reunited when the latter stops the former from jumping off a bridge, the play's setting. Each...
- The Odd Couple
The Odd Couple is a 1965 Broadway play by Neil Simon, followed by a successful film and television series, as well as other derivative works and spin offs, many featuring one or more of the same actors. The plot concerns two mismatched roommates, one neat and uptight, the other more easygoing but...
- Tiny Alice
Tiny Alice, a three act play written by Edward Albee, premiered on Broadway at the Billy Rose Theatre on December 29, 1964.- Billy Rose Theatre production :...
- 1966: Marat/Sade
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade , almost invariably shortened to Marat/Sade, is a 1963 play by Peter Weiss...
- Inadmissible Evidence
Inadmissible Evidence is a Tony-nominated play written by John Osborne in November 1964. It was also filmed in 1968.The protagonist of the play is William Maitland, a middle-aged English solicitor who has come to hate his entire life. Much of the play consists of lengthy monologues in which...
- Philadelphia, Here I Come!
- The Right Honourable Gentleman
- 1967: The Homecoming
The Homecoming is a two-act award-winning play written in 1964 by Nobel laureate, Harold Pinter. First published in 1965, the original Broadway production won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Play and its 40th-anniversary Broadway production at the Cort Theatre was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for...
- A Delicate Balance
- Black Comedy
Black Comedy is a one-act play by British dramatist Peter Shaffer, first performed in 1965. The play is, suitably enough, a black comedy in which the effect loss of light would have on a group of people who all hold things from each other is explored; as such, its title is a pun.The play is a farce...
- The Killing of Sister George
The Killing of Sister George is a 1964 play by Frank Marcus that was adapted as a 1968 film directed by Robert Aldrich.Sister George is a beloved character in the popular radio series Applehurst, a nurse who ministers to the medical needs and personal problems of the local villagers...
- 1968: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is an absurdist, existentialist tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard, first staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1966. The play expands upon the exploits of two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern...
- A Day in the Death of Joe Egg
A Day in the Death of Joe Egg is a 1967 play by English playwright Peter Nichols, first staged at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, Scotland before transferring to London's West End theatres in 1968.-Plot summary:Characters* Bri* Grace* Joe* Freddie...
- Plaza Suite
Plaza Suite is a comedy play by Neil Simon.-Plot:The play is composed of three acts, each involving different characters but all set in Suite 719 of New York City's Plaza Hotel...
- The Price
The Price may refer to:* The Price , by Arthur Miller* The Price , by Jim Starlin* "The Price" , a 1989 episode of the television program Star Trek: The Next Generation...
- 1969: The Great White Hope
The Great White Hope is a 1967 play written by Howard Sackler, later adapted in 1970 for a film of the same name. The play was first produced by Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. and debuted on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on October 3, 1968 for a run of 546 performances, directed by Edwin Sherin...
- Hadrian VII
- Lovers
Lovers is a 1967 play written by Northern Irish playwright Brian Friel.Lovers is a play broken in to two parts, Winners and Losers.-Winners:...
- The Man in the Glass Booth
The Man in the Glass Booth is a 1975 American drama film directed by Arthur Hiller. It was adapted from the novel and stage play of the same name by Robert Shaw. The plot was inspired by actual events surrounding the kidnapping and trial of Adolf Eichmann....
1970s
- 1970: Borstal Boy
Borstal Boy is an autobiographical 1958 book by Brendan Behan. The story depicts a young, fervently idealistic Behan who loses his naivete over the three years of his sentence, softening his radical stance and warming to the other prisoners...
- Child's Play
Child's Play is a stage play written by Robert Marasco. It opened on Broadway on February 12, 1970 at the Royale Theatre, and ran for 342 performances, closing on December 12, 1970. The production was produced by David Merrick and directed by Joseph Hardy....
- Indians
Indians is a play by Arthur Kopit.At its core is Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show. The play examines the contradictions of Cody's life and his work with Native Americans....
- The Last of the Red Hot Lovers
The Last of the Red Hot Lovers is a play by Neil Simon.At the comedy's core is Barney Cashman, a middle-aged, married nebbish who wants to join the sexual revolution before it's too late...
- 1971: Sleuth
Sleuth is a 1970 play written by Anthony Shaffer. The play is set in the Wiltshire, England manor house of Andrew Wyke, an immensely successful mystery writer. His home reflects Wyke's obsession with the inventions and deceptions of fiction and his fascination with games and game-playing...
- Home
Home is a play by David Storey. Written in a quasi-absurdist style heavily influenced by Samuel Becket, it is set in a mental asylum, although this fact is revealed gradually as the story progresses....
- The Philanthropist
The Philanthropist is a quarterly academic journal devoted to the legal, management and accounting issues facing charitable and not-for-profit organizations. It was founded as an occasional publication of the Trusts and Estates Section of the Canadian Bar Association - Ontario in Toronto,...
- Paul Sill's Story Theatre
Paul Sills' Story Theatre is a play with music, adapted from fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm.It opened on Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre on October 26, 1970 and closed on July 3, 1971, after 243 performances and 14 previews...
- 1972: Sticks and Bones
Sticks and Bones is a 1971 play by David Rabe. The black comedy focuses on David, a blind Vietnam War veteran who finds himself unable to come to terms with his actions on the battlefield and alienated from his family because they neither can accept his disability nor understand his wartime...
- Old Times
Old Times is a play by the Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter. It was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre in London on June 1, 1971. It starred Colin Blakely, Dorothy Tutin, and Vivien Merchant, and was directed by Peter Hall...
- The Prisoner of Second Avenue
The Prisoner of Second Avenue is an American black comedy play by Neil Simon, later made into a film released in 1975.The play ran on Broadway from November 1971 until September 1973, with Peter Falk and Lee Grant starring as Mel and Edna Edison, and Vincent Gardenia as Mel's brother Harry. The...
- Vivat! Vivat Regina!
Vivat! Vivat Regina! is a Tony-nominated play written by Robert Bolt. It debuted at Chichester in 1970 and later had a successful run on Broadway in 1972....
- 1973: That Championship Season
That Championship Season is a 1972 play by Jason Miller. The play made its off-Broadway debut at the Estelle Newman Theatre on May 2, 1972, where it ran for 144 performances...
- Butley
Butley is a 1971 play by Simon Gray. The title character, a literary professor and T. S. Eliot scholar, is a suicidal alcoholic who loses his wife and male lover on the same day...
- The Changing Room
The Changing Room is a play by David Storey.At its core is a semi-pro Northern England rugby team. Six days a week, its members are peaceable men toiling away at mindless, working class jobs. On the seventh, they prepare for gory combat on the playing field...
- The Sunshine Boys
The Sunshine Boys is a play by Neil Simon that was produced on Broadway in 1972 and later adapted for film and television.-Plot:The play focuses on aging Al Lewis and Willy Clark, a one-time vaudevillian team known as "Lewis and Clark" who, over the course of forty-odd years, not only grew to hate...
- 1974: The River Niger
- In the Boom Boom Room
In the Boom Boom Room is a play by David Rabe. It focuses on a go-go dancer whose difficult relationship with her parents has propelled her into a series of unfortunate affairs with both men and women....
- The Au Pair Man
- Ulysses in Nighttown
Ulysses in Nighttown is an Award winning play based on an episode from the novel Ulysses by James Joyce that was adapted by Marjorie Barkentin and contains incidental music by Peter Link. The show opened Off-Broadway in 1958 with Zero Mostel to a long and successful run, earning Mostel an Obie Award...
- 1975: Equus
Equus is a play by Peter Shaffer written in 1973, telling the story of a psychiatrist who attempts to treat a young man who has a pathological religious/sexual fascination with horses....
- Same Time, Next Year
Same Time, Next Year is 1975 comedy play by Bernard Slade. The plot focuses on two people, married to others, who meet for a romantic tryst once a year for two dozen years.-Plot synopsis:...
- Seascape
Seascape is a play by American playwright Edward Albee. Directed by Albee himself, the production opened on Broadway on January 26, 1975, at the Sam S. Shubert Theatre, starring Deborah Kerr, Barry Nelson, Maureen Anderman and Frank Langella, who won a Tony Award for his performance as Leslie...
- Short Eyes
Short Eyes is a Curtis Mayfield soundtrack to Robert M. Young's 1977 film, based upon the play of the same name by Miguel Piñero. The album contains one of Mayfield's last funk hits, “Do Do Wap is Strong in Here”.-Track listing:...
- Sizwe Banzi is Dead
Sizwe Banzi Is Dead is a play by Athol Fugard, written collaboratively with two South African actors, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona, both of whom appeared in the original production. Its world première occurred on October 8, 1972 at the Space Theatre, Cape Town, South Africa...
/ The IslandThe Island is a play by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona.The apartheid-era drama, inspired by a true story, is set in an unnamed prison clearly based on South Africa's notorious Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was held for twenty-seven years...
- The National Health
The National Health is a play by Peter Nichols. Reminiscent of the Carry On film series, this black comedy with tragic overtones focuses on the appalling conditions in an under-funded national health hospital, which are contrasted comically with a Dr...
- 1976: Travesties
Travesties is a comedy by British dramatist, Tom Stoppard, first produced at the Aldwych Theatre, London, on 10 June 1974, in a production by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The play was directed by Peter Wood and designed by Carl Toms, with lighting by Robert Ornbo...
- The First Breeze of Summer
- Knock Knock
- Lamppost Reunion
- 1977: The Shadow Box
The Shadow Box is a play written by actor Michael Cristofer. The play made its Broadway debut on March 31 1977. The original cast included Simon Oakland as Joe, Laurence Luckinbill as Brian, Mandy Patinkin as Mark, Geraldine Fitzgerald as Felicity, and Vincent Spano as Steve.-Plot synopsis:The play...
- For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf is a 1975 stageplay by Ntozake Shange. First performed at the Bacchanal, a woman's bar outside of Berkeley, California, it was first produced in New York City at Studio Riobea in 1975; produced Off-Broadway at the Anspacher...
- Otherwise Engaged
Otherwise Engaged is a bleakly comic play by English playwright Simon Gray. It opened at the Queen's Theatre in London on 10 July 1975, with Alan Bates as the star and Harold Pinter as director, produced by Michael Codron. Ian Charleson co-starred as Dave, a Glasgow lout...
- Streamers
Streamers is a play by David Rabe The production transferred to Broadway, opening on April 21 1976 at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre, where it ran for 478 performances. The cast included Terry Alexander as Roger, Paul Rudd as Billy, and Dorian Harewood as Carlyle, with Evans, Sweet, and...
- 1978: Da
Da is a 1978 comedy play by Irish playwright Hugh Leonard.The play had its New York City premiere at the off-off-Broadway Hudson Guild Theatre in 1978, and this production transferred to Broadway shortly after it closed. It was directed by Melvin Bernhardt and produced on Broadway by Lester...
- Chapter Two
- Deathtrap
Deathtrap is a 1978 play by Ira Levin that involves many plot twists. It was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play and holds the record as the longest-running comedy-thriller on Broadway...
- The Gin Game
The Gin Game is a two-person, two-act play by D.L. Coburn that premiered at American Theater Arts in Hollywood in September 1976, directed by Kip Niven. It was Coburn's first play, and the theater's first production.-Plot synopsis:...
- 1979: The Elephant Man
The Elephant Man is a 1979 play by Bernard Pomerance. The production's Broadway debut was produced by Richmond Crinkley and Nelle Nugent, and directed by Jack Hofsiss....
- Bedroom Farce
Bedroom Farce is a 1975 comedic play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It had a London production at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1978.-Overview:...
- Whose Life Is It Anyway?
Whose Life Is It Anyway? is a play by Brian Clark adapted from his 1972 television play of the same title. The play premiered at the Mermaid Theatre in London's West End in 1978 starring Tom Conti as Ken.-Plot:...
- Wings
Wings is a 1978 play by American playwright Arthur Kopit. Originating as a radio play, it was later adapted for stage and screen.In 1976, Kopit was commissioned to write an original radio play by the NPR drama project Earplay...
1980s
- 1980: Children of a Lesser God
Children of a Lesser God is a play by Mark Medoff, published in 1980 focusing on the conflicted professional and romantic relationship between deaf former student, Sarah Norman, and her teacher, James Leeds. The play was specially written for the Deaf actress Phyllis Frelich, based to some extent...
- Bent
Bent is a 1979 play by Martin Sherman. It revolves around the persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany, and takes place during and after the Night of the Long Knives....
- Home
Home is a play by David Storey. Written in a quasi-absurdist style heavily influenced by Samuel Becket, it is set in a mental asylum, although this fact is revealed gradually as the story progresses....
- Talley's Folly
Talley's Folly is a 1979 play by American playwright Lanford Wilson, the second in his cycle, The Talley Trilogy between his plays Talley & Son and Fifth of July . Set in an old boathouse near rural Lebanon, Missouri in 1944, it is a romantic comedy following the characters Matt Friedman and Sally...
- 1981: Amadeus
Amadeus is a stage play written in 1979 by English author Peter Shaffer, loosely based on the lives of the composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. Amadeus was inspired by Mozart and Salieri, a short play by Aleksandr Pushkin and later adapted into an opera of the same name by Nikolai...
- A Lesson from Aloes
- A Life
A Life is a bittersweet comedy by Irish playwright Hugh Leonard. The primary character is Desmond Drumm, a highly intelligent but bitterly cynical civil servant who must try to make sense of his life after learning that he has a terminal illness....
- Fifth of July
Fifth of July is a 1978 play by American playwright Lanford Wilson. Set in rural Missouri in 1977, it revolves around the Talley family and their friends, and focuses on the disillusionment with America in the wake of the Vietnam War...
- 1982: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is an eight-hour stage play, presented over two performances, adapted from the Charles Dickens novel of the same name by David Edgar. Directed by John Caird and Trevor Nunn, it opened on 5 June 1980 at the Aldwych Theatre in London. The music and lyrics...
- Crimes of the Heart
Crimes of the Heart is a play by Beth Henley.-Synopsis:At the core of the tragic comedy are the three Magrath sisters, Meg, Babe, and Lenny, who reunite at Old Granddaddy's home in Hazlehurst, Mississippi after Babe shoots her abusive husband. The trio was raised in a dysfunctional family with a...
- The Dresser
The Dresser is a 1983 film which tells the story of an aging actor's personal assistant, who struggles to keep his charge's life together. The film is based on a screenplay by Ronald Harwood, based on his successful West End and Broadway play....
- Master Harold...and the Boys
Master Harold...and the Boys is a play by Athol Fugard. First produced at the Yale Repertory Theatre in early 1982 and made its premiere on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre on 4 May where it ran for 344 performances...
- 1983: Torch Song Trilogy
Torch Song Trilogy is a collection of three plays by Harvey Fierstein rendered in three acts: International Stud, Fugue in a Nursery, and Widows and Children First! The story centers on Arnold Beckoff, a torch song-singing Jewish drag queen living in New York City in the late 1970 and 1980s...
Angels FallFor the TV Film adaptation of the Nora Roberts book please see Angels Fall Angels Fall is a Tony-nominated play written by Lanford Wilson...
- 'night, Mother
'night, Mother is a 1983 play by Marsha Norman about a daughter, Jessie, and her mother, Thelma . The play opens with Jessie calmly telling Mama that by morning she'll be dead, as she plans to commit suicide that very evening...
- Plenty
Plenty is a play by David Hare about British post-war disillusion. Susan Traherne, a former secret agent, is a woman conflicted by the contrast between her past, exciting triumphs — she had worked behind enemy lines as a Special Operations Executive courier in Nazi-occupied France during World War...
- 1984: The Real Thing
The Real Thing is a play by Tom Stoppard, first performed in 1982. It examines the nature of honesty, and its use of a play within a play is one of many levels on which the author teases the audience with the difference between semblance and reality....
Glengarry Glen RossGlengarry Glen Ross is a 1982 play written by David Mamet. The play shows parts of two days in the lives of four desperate Chicago real estate agents who are prepared to engage in any number of unethical, illegal acts—from lies and flattery to bribery, threats, intimidation, and burglary—to sell...
- Noises Off
Noises Off is a 1982 play by English playwright Michael Frayn. The idea for it was born in 1970, when Frayn was standing in the wings watching a performance of Chinamen, a farce that he had written for Lynn Redgrave...
- Play Memory
- 1985: Biloxi Blues
Biloxi Blues is a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon. The second chapter in what is known as his Eugene Trilogy, it follows Brighton Beach Memoirs and precedes Broadway Bound....
As IsAs Is is a play by William M. Hoffman.The Circle Repertory Company and The Glines co-production, directed by Marshall W. Mason, opened on March 10, 1985 at the Circle Theatre, where it ran for 49 performances...
- Hurlyburly
Hurlyburly is a dark comedy play by David Rabe.-Plot:More than three hours long, Hurlyburly focuses on the intersecting lives of several low- to mid-level Hollywood players in the 1980s. Fueled by massive amounts of drugs, they attempt to find some meaning in their isolated, empty lives by engaging...
- Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a 1982 play - one of a ten-play cycle by August Wilson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright - that chronicles twentieth century African American experience...
- 1986: I'm Not Rappaport
I'm Not Rappaport is a play by Herb Gardner originally staged by Seattle Repertory Theatre in 1984. Its Broadway debut production, directed by Daniel Sullivan, starring Judd Hirsch, Cleavon Little, Jace Alexander, and Mercedes Ruehl, opened on November 19, 1985 at the Booth Theatre, where it ran...
BenefactorsBenefactors is a 1984 play by Michael Frayn. It is set in the 1960s and concerns an idealistic architect David and his wife Jane and their relationship with the cynical Colin and his wife Sheila...
- Blood Knot
Blood Knot is an early play by South African playwright, actor, and director Athol Fugard, performed first, but only one time, in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1961, with the playwright Fugard and Zakes Mokae playing the brothers Morris and Zachariah....
- The House of Blue Leaves
The House of Blue Leaves is a play by American playwright John Guare, first staged in 1966 by Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut....
- 1987: Fences
Broadway Bound
Broadway Bound is a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon. It is the last chapter in his Eugene Trilogy, following Brighton Beach Memoirs and Biloxi Blues....
- Coastal Disturbances
Coastal Disturbances is a play by Tina Howe, which premiered Off-Broadway in 1986 and transferred to Broadway. It received a Tony Award nomination as Best Play.-Production history:...
- Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Les Liaisons Dangereuses may refer to:* Les Liaisons dangereuses, by Pierre Choderlos de LaclosStage* Les liaisons dangereuses , adapted by Christopher Hampton...
- 1988: M. Butterfly
M. Butterfly is a 1988 play by David Henry Hwang loosely based on the relationship between French diplomat Bernard Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu, a male Peking opera singer....
A Walk in the WoodsA Walk in the Woods is a 1988 play by Lee Blessing. It depicts the developing relationship between two arms limitation negotiators, one Russian and one American, over a year of negotiation. The play was nominated for both a Tony award and a Pulitzer Prize....
- Joe Turner's Come and Gone
Joe Turner's Come and Gone is a play by American playwright, August Wilson, the second installment of his decade-by-decade chronicle of the African-American experience, The Pittsburgh Cycle...
- Speed-the-Plow
Speed-the-Plow is a play by David Mamet which is a satirical dissection of the American movie business, a theme Mamet would revisit in his later films Wag the Dog and State and Main .-Synopsis:...
- 1989: The Heidi Chronicles
The Heidi Chronicles is a 1988 play by Wendy Wasserstein. The play won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.-Production history:A workshop production at Seattle Repertory Theatre was held in April 1988, directed by Daniel J. Sullivan....
Largely New York
- Lend Me a Tenor
Lend Me a Tenor is a comedy by Ken Ludwig. The play has been translated into sixteen languages and produced in twenty-five countries. It is a popular choice of regional theatre companies and community theatre groups...
- Shirley Valentine
Shirley Valentine is a one-character play by Willy Russell. Taking the form of a monologue by a middle-aged, working class Liverpool housewife, it focuses on her life before and after a transforming holiday abroad.-Plot:...
1990s
- 1990: The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is a 1988 play adapted by Frank Galati from the classic John Steinbeck novel of the same name, with incidental music by Michael Smith. The play debuted at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, followed by a May 1989 production at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego and a June 1989...
Lettice and LovageLettice and Lovage is a comedic play by Peter Shaffer, author of Equus and Amadeus. The play was written specifically for Dame Maggie Smith, who originated the title role of Lettice Douffet in both the English and American runs of the production. The role of Lotte Schoen was played by Margaret...
- Prelude to a Kiss
- The Piano Lesson
The Piano Lesson is a play by American playwright August Wilson, the fourth in his series, The Pittsburgh Cycle. The play premiered on 26 November 1987 at the Yale Repertory Theatre and debuted on Broadway in 1990. The original Broadway cast featured Charles S. Dutton, Carl Gordon, Rocky Carroll,...
- 1991: Lost in Yonkers
Lost in Yonkers is a 1991 play by Neil Simon. After eleven previews, the Broadway production, produced by Emanuel Azenberg and directed by Gene Saks, opened on February 21 1991 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, where it ran for 780 performances...
Our Country's GoodOur Country's Good is a 1988 play written by British playwright, Timberlake Wertenbaker, adapted from the Thomas Keneally novel The Playmaker...
- Shadowlands
Shadowlands is a 1985 television film, written by William Nicholson, directed by Norman Stone and produced by David M. Thompson for BBC Wales. Its subject is the relationship between Oxford don and author, C. S. Lewis and Joy Gresham....
- Six Degrees of Separation
- 1992: Dancing at Lughnasa
Dancing at Lughnasa is a 1990 play by dramatist Brian Friel set in Ireland's County Donegal in August 1936 in the fictional town of Ballybeg. It is a memory play told from the point of view of the adult Michael Evans, the narrator...
Four Baboons Adoring the Sun
- Two Shakespearean Actors
- Two Trains Running
Two Trains Running is a play by American playwright, August Wilson, the seventh in his ten-part series, The Pittsburgh Cycle. It was first performed by the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, and staged its Broadway premiere on 13 April 1992 at the Walter Kerr Theatre in New York...
- 1993: Angels in America: Millennium Approaches
The Sisters Rosensweig
The Sisters Rosensweig is a play by Wendy Wasserstein. The play focuses on three Jewish- American sisters and their lives. It "broke theatrical ground by concentrating on a non-traditional cast of three middle-aged women." Wasserstein received the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in...
- Someone Who'll Watch Over Me
Someone Who'll Watch over Me is a play written by Irish dramatist Frank McGuinness. The play focuses on the trials and tribulations of an Irishman, an Englishman and an American who are kidnapped and held hostage by unseen Arabs in Lebanon. As the three men strive for survival they also strive to...
- The Song of Jacob Zulu
- 1994: Angels in America: Perestroika
Broken Glass
Broken Glass is a 1994 play by Arthur Miller, focusing on a couple in New York City in 1938, the same time of Kristallnacht, in Nazi Germany. The play's title is derived from Kristallnacht, which is also known as the Night of Broken Glass....
- The Kentucky Cycle
The Kentucky Cycle is a series of nine one-act plays by Robert Schenkkan that explores American mythology, particularly the mythology of the West, through the intertwined histories of three fictional families struggling over a portion of land in the Cumberland Plateau...
- Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992
- 1995: Love! Valour! Compassion!
Love! Valour! Compassion! is a 1994 play by Terrence McNally, directed by Joe Mantello. Its off-Broadway premiere was at the Manhattan Theatre Club on October 11, 1994 where it staged 72 performances...
ArcadiaArcadia is a 1993 play by Tom Stoppard concerning the relationship between past and present and between order and disorder and the certainty of knowledge.-Synopsis:...
- Having Our Say
- Indiscretions
- 1996: Master Class
Master Class is a play by Terrence McNally, with incidental music by Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini, and Vincenzo Bellini.The play originally was staged by the Philadelphia Theatre Company and the Mark Taper Forum. After twelve previews, the Broadway production, directed by Leonard Foglia, opened...
Buried ChildBuried Child is a play by Sam Shepard first presented in 1978. It won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and launched Shepard to national fame as a playwright...
- Racing Demon
Racing Demon is a 1990 play by English playwright David Hare. Part of a trio of plays about British institutions, it focuses on the Church of England, and tackles issues such as gay ordination, and the role of evangelism in inner-city communities...
- Seven Guitars
Seven Guitars is a 1995 play by American playwright, August Wilson. It focuses on seven African American characters in the year 1948. The play begins and ends after the funeral of one of the main characters, showing events leading to the funeral in flashbacks...
- 1997: The Last Night of Ballyhoo
-Plot:The dramedy is set in the upper class German-Jewish city of Atlanta, Georgia in December 1939. Hitler is about to invade Poland, Gone with the Wind is about to premiere, and Adolph Freitag and his sister Boo and nieces Lala and Sunny - a Jewish family so highly assimilated they have a...
SkylightSkylight is a play by British dramatist David Hare. It opened at the Royal National Theatre, Cottesloe, directed by Richard Eyre, in 1995...
- Stanley
Stanley is a 1996 play written by English playwright, Pam Gems. The play was premiered at the Royal National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre in London.-Plot synopsis:...
- The Young Man From Atlanta
The Young Man From Atlanta is a drama written by American dramatist, Horton Foote first produced Off Broadway by the Signature Theatre on 27 January 1995. Foote received the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the work...
- 1998: 'Art'
‘Art’ is a French language play by Yasmina Reza that premiered on 28 October 1994 at Comédie des Champs-Élysées in Paris. The English language adaptation, translated by Christopher Hampton opened in London's West End on 15 October 1996....
FreakFreak was a one-man show, written and performed by actor/comedian John Leguizamo. The play debuted at Cort Theater on Broadway in 1998 and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding One-Person Show....
- Golden Child
Golden Child may refer to:* Golden Child, a 1997 song by DJ Sammy* The Golden Child, 1986 movie starring Eddie Murphy* Golden Child, 1998 play by David Henry Hwang* The Golden Child * Golden Child...
- The Beauty Queen of Leenane
The Beauty Queen of Leenane is a 1996 drama by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh premiered by the Druid Theatre Company in Galway Ireland. It also enjoyed successful runs at London's West End, and Broadway, and off-Broadway theatres in New York....
- 1999: Side Man
Side Man is a memory play by Warren Leight. His inspiration was his father Donald, who worked as a sideman, in jazz parlance a musician for hire who can blend in with the band or star as a solo performer, according to what is required by the gig.-Plot:...
CloserCloser is the third play written by English playwright Patrick Marber. The play was premiered at the Royal National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre in London in 1997, and made its North American debut at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway on 25 January 1999....
- The Lonesome West
The Lonesome West is a play by contemporary Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, part of his Connemara trilogy, which includes The Beauty Queen of Leenane and A Skull in Connemara...
- Not about Nightingales
Not about Nightingales is a play by Tennessee Williams that was written in 1938 for the Group Theatre in New York City but was rejected and remained unproduced until 1998. The play is an 18-character socially-minded drama set in "a dynamite-proof, escape-proof" U.S. island prison that follows the...
2000s
- 2000: Copenhagen
Copenhagen is a play by Michael Frayn, based around an event that occurred in Copenhagen in 1941, a meeting between the physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. It debuted in London in 1998. Within the National Theatre in London, it ran for more than 300 performances, starring David Burke ,...
Dirty BlondeDirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love is a memoir by rock musician and actress Courtney Love. The book, published by Faber & Faber and released in October 2006, contains journal entries, letters, poetry, handwritten song lyrics, collages, school and juvenile hall entries, show fliers,...
- The Ride Down Mt. Morgan
The Ride Down Mt. Morgan is a play by Arthur Miller.The play's central character is Lyman Felt, an insurance agent and bigamist who maintains families in New York City and Elmira in upstate New York...
- True West
True West is a play by American playwright Sam Shepard. Like most of his works it is inspired by myths of American life and popular culture. The play is a more traditional narrative than most of the plays that Shepard has written.-Plot:...
- 2001: Proof
Proof is a play by David Auburn originally produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club on 23 May 2000. It then went to Broadway on 24 October 2000 at the Walter Kerr Theatre. Directed by Daniel J. Sullivan, with Mary-Louise Parker as Catherine, Larry Bryggman as Robert, Ben Shenkman as Hal, and Johanna...
The Invention of LoveThe Invention of Love is a play by Tom Stoppard portraying the life of poet A.E. Housman, focusing specifically on his personal life and love for a college classmate. The play is written from the viewpoint of Housman dealing with his memories after dying and contains many classical allusions. ...
- King Hedley II
King Hedley II is a play by American playwright, August Wilson, the ninth in his ten-part series, The Pittsburgh Cycle. It was first performed by the Seattle Repertory Theatre in Seattle, Washington, and staged its Broadway premiere on 1 May 2001 at the Virginia Theatre in New York City.-Plot...
- The Tale of the Allergist's Wife
The Tale of the Allergist's Wife is a play by Charles Busch.In his first play written for a mainstream audience, Busch explores the Upper West Side milieu of aspiring intellectual and middle-aged upper class matron Marjorie Taub, who lives comfortably with her doctor husband Ira in an expensively...
- 2002: The Goat: or, Who Is Sylvia?
Fortune's Fool
Fortune's Fool is a play by Ivan Turgenev.The setting is a vast Russian country estate where the resident aristocrats and their many servants are jolted out of their tranquility by the arrival of someone from the city, down-on-his-luck Vassily Semyonitch Kuzovkin, whose own property has been tied...
- Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses is a play by American playwright Mary Zimmerman adapted from the classic Ovid poem, Metamorphoses. The play premiered in 1996 as Six Myths at Northwestern University and later the Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago...
- Topdog/Underdog
Topdog/Underdog is a play by Suzan-Lori Parks. Parks received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2002 for the work.The play chronicles the adult lives of two African American brothers, Lincoln and Booth, as they cope with women, work, poverty, gambling, racism, and their troubled upbringings...
- 2003: Take Me Out
Enchanted April
The Enchanted April is a 1922 novel by Elizabeth von Arnim. An Academy Award-nominated film based on the novel, directed by Mike Newell, was released in 1992...
- Say Goodnight, Gracie
Say Goodnight, Gracie is a one-man play by Rupert Holmes.Adapted from the reminiscences of George Burns, the multimedia presentation traces the comedian-raconteur's life from his childhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to his early career in vaudeville to his momentous meeting and subsequent...
- Vincent in Brixton
Vincent in Brixton is a play by Nicholas Wright. The play premiered at London's National Theatre. It transferred to the Playhouse Theatre and later to Broadway.It focuses on artist Vincent Van Gogh's time in Brixton, London in 1873...
- 2004: I Am My Own Wife
I Am My Own Wife is a play by Doug Wright based on his conversations with German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. The one-man play premiered Off-Broadway in 2003 at Playwrights Horizons. It opened on Broadway later that year. The play was developed with Moisés Kaufman and his Tectonic...
Anna in the TropicsAnna in the Tropics is a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Nilo Cruz.When Cuban immigrants brought the cigar-making industry to Florida in the 19th Century, they carried with them another tradition. As the workers toiled away in the factory hand rolling each cigar, the lector, , would read to them...
- Frozen
Frozen is a 2004 play by Bryony Lavery that tells the story of the disappearance of a 10-year-old girl, Rhona. The play follows Rhona's mother and killer over the years that follow...
- The Retreat from Moscow
The Retreat from Moscow is a play written by William Nicholson about the end of a three-decade marriage and the subsequent emotional fallout. The title is taken from Napoleon's costly invasion of Moscow and the subsequent retreat. It was first performed at the Chichester Festival Theatre in...
- 2005: Doubt
Democracy
Democracy is a play by Michael Frayn which premiered at the Royal National Theatre on September 9, 2003, directed by Michael Blakemore, starring Roger Allam as Willy Brandt and Conleth Hill as Günter Guillaume...
- Gem of the Ocean
Gem of the Ocean is a play by American playwright August Wilson. It is the first installment of his decade-by-decade, ten-play chronicle, The Pittsburgh Cycle, dramatizing the African-American experience in the twentieth century.-Plot :...
- The Pillowman
The Pillowman is a 2003 play by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. An especially dark black comedy, it tells the tale of Katurian, a fiction writer living in a police state who is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories, and their similarities to a number of bizarre child...
- 2006: The History Boys
The History Boys is a play by English playwright Alan Bennett. The play premiered at the Lyttelton Theatre in London on 18 May 2004. Its Broadway debut was on 23 April 2006 at the Broadhurst Theatre where there were 185 performances staged before it closed on 1 October 2006.-Characters:*...
The Lieutenant of InishmoreThe Lieutenant of Inishmore is a black comedy by playwright Martin McDonagh, first produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London in 2001.-Act One:...
- Rabbit Hole
Rabbit Hole is a play by David Lindsay-Abaire commissioned by South Coast Repertory and first presented at its Pacific Playwrights Festival reading series in 2005...
- Shining City
Shining City is a play by Conor McPherson, set in Dublin which was first performed in London's West End at the Royal Court Theatre in June 2004.It opened at the Biltmore Theatre on May 9, 2006.-External links:* * *...
- 2007: The Coast of Utopia
The Coast of Utopia is a 2002 trilogy of plays: Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage, written by Tom Stoppard with focus on the philosophical debates in pre-revolution Russia between 1833 and 1866....
Frost/Nixon
- The Little Dog Laughed
The Little Dog Laughed is a play by Douglas Carter Beane.The four characters are an actor, Mitchell, his acerbic agent Diane, a hustler named Alex, and Alex's girlfriend Ellen...
- Radio Golf
Radio Golf is a play by American playwright, August Wilson, the final installment in his ten-part series, The Pittsburgh Cycle. It was first performed in 2005 by the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut and staged its Broadway premiere on 8 May 2007 at the Cort Theatre in New York City...
- 2008: August: Osage County
August: Osage County is an original darkly comedic play by Tracy Letts. The June 28, 2007 world premiere production was produced by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, Illinois, and closed on August 26, 2007. Its Broadway debut was at the Imperial Theater on December 4, 2007 and...
Rock 'n' RollRock 'n' Roll is a play by Czech-born British playwright Tom Stoppard that premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2006.-Plot summary:...
- The Seafarer
The Seafarer is a 2006 play by Irish playwright Conor McPherson. It is set on Christmas Eve in Baldoyle, a coastal suburb north of Dublin city. The play centers on James "Sharkey" Harkin, an alcoholic who has recently returned to live with his blind, aging brother, Richard Harkin...
- The 39 Steps
The 39 Steps is a play adapted from the 1915 novel by John Buchan and the 1935 film by Alfred Hitchcock. Patrick Barlow wrote the adaptation, based on the original concept by Simon Corble and of a two-actor version of the play...
- 2009: God of Carnage
God of Carnage is a Tony Award-winning play by Yasmina Reza, first directed by Jürgen Gosch and performed in Zürich on 8 December, 2006. It was first produced in English in London on 25 March, 2008, in a translation by Christopher Hampton...
33 Variations33 Variations is a play by Moisés Kaufman, inspired by Ludwig van Beethoven's eponymous work. It débuted on Broadway on March 9, 2009, starring Jane Fonda...
- Dividing the Estate
Dividing the Estate is a play by Horton Foote. Set in the fictional town of Harrison, Texas in 1987, it focuses on the Gordons, a clan of malcontents ruled by octogenarian matriarch Stella that must prepare for an uncertain future when plunging real estate values and an unexpected tax bill have a...
- reasons to be pretty
reasons to be pretty is a play by Neil Labute, his first to be staged on Broadway. The plot centers on four young working class friends and lovers who become increasingly dissatisfied with their dead-end lives and each other...
See also
- Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play
This is a list of winners of the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play initially introduced in 1955 as the Vernon Rice Award for Outstanding Achievement in Theatre.-1950s:Vernon Rice Award for Best Production...
- Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play
External links