“Intimate Apparel,” Lynn Nottage’s drama about a lonely seamstress and her search for love in turn-of-the-century New York, has won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for best play of the 2003-2004 season.
The critics voted Tuesday not to give a prize for best musical or best foreign play. The Circle has the option of giving a best foreign or best American play award, depending on what wins the best-play prize.
Barbara Cook, currently performing in London with her latest one-woman show, “Barbara Cook’s Broadway,” will receive a special award for her contribution to musical theater. The show played New York earlier in the season and will return to Lincoln Center June 2-26.
“Some of the plays I’ve written before this have utilized dark, ironic humor,” Nottage said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “But with ‘Intimate Apparel,’ I told friends, ‘I am going to do something radical in theater today — I am going to write a story about love that isn’t cynical.”’
Nottage got the idea for “Intimate Apparel” after talking to her grandmother about her great-grandmother, Esther, who happened to be a seamstress and who married a man who helped dig the Panama Canal, just like the character in her play.
“Intimate Appeal,” which has had regional productions at Center Stage in Baltimore and at South Coast Rep in California, is currently running at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Laura Pels Theatre.
The Drama Critics’ Circle awards will be given at a private reception May 18.
Founded in 1935, the Circle is comprised of 20 drama critics from daily newspapers, magazines and wire services based in the New York metropolitan area.