Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “Purpose” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Cole Escola’s “Oh, Mary” and Itamar Moses’s “The Ally” were selected as finalists.
New York Magazine theater critic Sara Holdren and New Yorker magazine’s Vinson Cunningham were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism
(To understand the Pulitzer in context of other theater awards, check out my New York Theater Awards Calendar and Guide 2025)
Pulitzer citation:
“A play about the complex dynamics and legacy of an upper middle class African-American family whose patriarch was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement, a skillful blend of drama and comedy that probes how different generations define heritage.”
In “Purpose,” an extraordinary play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Tony winner for last season’s “Appropriate”) opening tonight on Broadway in a terrifically acted, crowd-pleasing production that marks Phylicia Rashad’s Broadway directorial debut, Kara Young as Aziza is starstruck when she discovers that her shy friend Naz (John Michael Hill) is the son of the Rev. Solomon Jasper. (Harry Lennix)
“Your father has been Solomon Jasper this whole time!?..” Aziza exclaims “You said your daddy was some sort of reverend but not like this kind of reverend! Not like a I-organize-marches reverend! Not like I-used-to-kick-it-with-Rosa-Parks reverend! Not like a MLK-shrine-in- the-living-room reverend!”
But then Aziza has dinner with the Jasper family in their dining room, sitting close to the oil painting of Martin Luther King Jr, but their behavior — which bears little resemblance to Dr. King’s — turns her awe into shock.
In “Purpose,’ Jacobs-Jenkins is clearly inspired by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his family – not just their accomplishments, but their scandals…it is a consistently entertaining play, and something more, a subtle, intelligent contemplation of the various ways the characters search for purpose, and how sweet it is to have one. Full review
Pulitzer Citation: A zany portrait of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln’s family life whose outrageous humor also serves as an empathetic celebration of anyone who’s been marginalized or misunderstood.
By the end of “Oh, Mary!,” we have learned that First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln was a homicidally bitter alcoholic and frustrated cabaret singer married to a vicious closet homosexual whose assassination didn’t go down the way we were taught. This is not meant to be historically accurate, of course; that’s beside the point. The point is to make the audience laugh.
So, what if you don’t find this alternative history all that funny?
Then you’d find yourself apparently out of step with the theatergoers who turned Cole Escola’s eighty-minute exercise in camp into an Off-Broadway hit, extended twice and completely sold out, despite astronomical ticket prices.
As both writer and star of “Oh, Mary!”, Escola, a familiar face on streaming TV comedies, seems to be trying for the mantle of next-generation Charles Ludlam and Charles Busch, by creating a ridiculous drag diva in a melodrama that’s also a spoof of a melodrama. Full review.
Pulitzer citation: “A timely drama about activism, conflicting expectations, and moral responsibility on a college campus, probing American identity and the contradictions within progressive politics, using richly drawn characters with a deep emotional resonance.”
With “The Ally,” playwright Itamar Moses clarifies with laser precision the dilemma facing liberal American Jews largely because of Israel. But the play takes wider aim as well, exploring some of the most charged issues roiling college campuses these days. If the play starts off feeling like a comedy about a well-meaning if uninvolved character who gets roped into allyship, Moses is unafraid to turn his entertainment into an intellectual debate, each of the seven characters articulating (and embodying) a different point of view, while the play itself largely avoids taking sides.
“The Ally” is much-needed, timely theater, but it isn’t completely up-to-date: Written before the October 7 2023 massacre of Israelis by Hamas and subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza, it’s set in September, 2023. So much has intensified in the last few months that “The Ally” could almost feel like a period piece, a time when people who sharply disagreed could still talk to one another. Full review.
The jury for the Drama prize:
David Henry Hwang (Chair)
Playwright; Professor Of Theatre Arts In The Faculty Of The Arts, Columbia University
Tanya Barfield
Co-Director, The Lila Acheson Wallace Playwrights Program, The Juilliard School
Rebecca Gilman
Playwright And Artistic Associate, Goodman Theatre
Helen Shaw
Staff Writer, The New Yorker
José Luis Valenzuela
Director, Latino Theater Company, Los Angeles Theatre Center
Finalist for Pulitzer Prize in Criticism: Sara Holdren of New York Magazine
citation: “For insightful theater criticism that combines a reporter’s eye and a historian’s memory to inform readers about current stage productions.”
Finalist: Vinson Cunningham of The New Yorker
citation: For illuminating and personal reviews of work that appears on television, streaming services or social media, trenchant criticism that explores contemporary issues and society.
(he also writes about theater)
