By Randy Gener

OSLO
By J.T. Rogers
Directed by Bartlett Sher

The Vivian Beaumont Theater
150 W. 65th Street

Tuesday through Saturday evenings at 8pm, and Sunday at 3pm.
Matinees Wednesday and Saturday at 2pm.
Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday evening performances are at 7pm.

Tickets are priced at $79- $149
Visit Lincoln Center Theater box office, on-line at Telecharge.com, or by visiting www.lct.org

NEW YORK CITY |  OSLO — In the Culture of One World believes that J.T. Rogers‘s thrillingly intellectual drama about the secrecy of the pivotal 1990s Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization — is the best play this year (and last year). For a while there, it seemed the play was getting too many nominations instead of being declared a winner. The trouble has been that too much attention descended upon SWEAT by Lynn Nottage, the other favorite play this year, which eventually won the Pulitzer in part because its themes and narrative jived with the recent U.S. Presidential elections.

And now the New York Drama Critics’s Circle agrees. This past May 8, the Circle named OSLO as best play of the 2016-17 season. THE BANDS VISIT was named best musical. The selections were made at the organization’™s 82nd annual voting meeting.  The award for best play carries a cash prize of $2,500. The prize is made possible by a grant from the Lucille Lortel Foundation.

OSLO stars Jennifer Ehle and Jefferson Mays | Photo by T. Charles Erickson

The awards will be presented at a private cocktail reception on Thursday, May 18.

OSLO, written by J.T. Rogers and directed by Bartlett Sher, had its world premiere at Lincoln Center Theater’€™s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater on July 11, 2016. It currently plays at Lincoln Center Theater’€™s Vivian Beaumont Theater, where it had its Broadway premiere on April 13, 2017.

The play originated from a chance connection between Rogers and Norwegian diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen through a mutual acquaintance (Rogers’ director Bartlett Sher). Through that mutual relationship, Rogers learned of the diplomat’s unheralded work developing “back-channel” communications in the 1990s negotiations, and took an interest in developing the story into a play — noting that the story fit his playwriting interests: “stories… framed against great political rupture… [about people] who struggle with, and against… [unfolding] world events — and who are [permanently changed] through that struggle,” Rogers added.

THE BAND’S VISIT, book by Itamar Moses, music and lyrics by David Yazbek, direction by David Cromer, had its world premiere at the Atlantic Theatre Company, on December 8, 2022 and closed on January 8, 2017.

Paula Vogel
Paula Vogel

Special citations were voted to Taylor Mac for A 24-DECADE HISTORY OF POPULAR MUSIC; Ruben Santiago-Hudson and the cast of JITNEY; and Paula Vogel for career achievement as a playwright and mentor.

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 performers), is the nation’s second-oldest theater award, after the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Adam Feldman, theater critic for Time Out New York, has served as president of the NYDCC since 2005. Elisabeth Vincentelli serves as vice president; Joe Dziemianowicz is treasurer.

For more information on the New York Drama Critics’ Circle, please visit www.dramacritics.org.


LAST YEAR |  NY Drama Critics Circle Award winners for the 2015–2016 Season
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