Good Night, Oscar Named Finalist for 2023 New Play Award Ahead of Broadway Premiere

The American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) announced that Doug Wright’s Good Night, Oscar, which is slated for the current Broadway season, is one of six finalists for the 2023 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award. The award honors the best new plays that premiered professionally outside of New York City in 2022.

Good Night, Oscar had its world premiere at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in the spring of 2022. The Broadway production begins previews on April 7 ahead of opening night on April 24 at the Belasco Theatre.

Set in 1958 as Jack Paar is hosting The Tonight Show, the play unfolds when he books his favorite guest: Oscar Levant.

Wright won the best play Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for I Am My Own Wife in 2004. He also wrote the books for the musicals Grey Gardens, The Little Mermaid, Hands on a Hardbody and War Paint.

The other finalists for the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award are Born with Teeth by Liz Duffy Adams, the ripple, the wave that carried me home by Christina Anderson (Paradise Square book writer), Sally & Tom by Suzan-Lori Parks (Topdog/Underdog playwright), “Spay” by Madison Fiedler and Swing State by Rebecca Gilman.