`Open House,’ `Fun Home’ Take Top Honors At Off-Broadway’s Lortel Awards

Playwright Will Eno’s The Open House and Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s musical Fun Home were named best play and musical, respectively, earlier tonight at the 29th annual Lucille Lortel Awards. Hotter-than-hot helmer Alex Timbers (Broadway’s Rocky) was named best director for his staging of Here Lies Love, the David Byrne/Fatboy Slim musical about the life and times of Imelda Marcos that recently resumed performances at the Public Theater. Here Lies Love was the top winner of the evening, walking off with five awards.

Best performance in a musical nods went to Michael Cerveris (Fun Home) and Ruthie Ann Miles (Here Lies Love).

Up-and-comer Tracee Chimo was named best actress in a play for Bad Jews. Steven Boyer won best actor for Hand To God.

Buyer & Cellar, Jonathan Tolins’s hit show starring Michael Urie as an out-of-work actor who takes a job maintaining a faux-street market in Barbra Streisand’s basement, was named outstanding solo show. The Foundry Theatre’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person Of Szechwan was named best revival.

The awards are overseen by the Off-Broadway League and are named for Lortel, the late actress, producer and founder of the White Barn Theatre in Connecticut and owner of the Theatre De Lys, later renamed in her honor, in Greenwich Village.

Veteran producer and Second Stage co-founder Robyn Goodman got a Lifetime Achievement Award and playwright Richard Nelson, whose landmark series of plays about the Apple family of New York’s Hudson Valley concluded last fall at the Public, was given a place on the Playwright’s Sidewalk outside the Lortel on Christopher Street.

The Lortels were founded as an alternative to the older Village Voice Obie Awards and are administered by the League, which represents commercial and non-profit producers.

Here’s the complete list of winners:

Outstanding Play

The Open House

Produced by Signature Theatre

Written by Will Eno

Outstanding Musical

Fun Home

Produced by The Public Theater

Music by Jeanine Tesori, Book and Lyrics by Lisa Kron

Based on the Alison Bechdel book

Outstanding Revival

Good Person of Szechwan

Produced by The Foundry Theatre

Written by Bertolt Brecht, Translation by John Willett

Outstanding Solo Show

Buyer & Cellar

Produced by Darren Bagert, Dan Shaheen, Ted Snowdon, Daryl Roth, Martin Massman, Pat Flicker Addiss, Doug Nevin, Joan Raffe & Jhett Tolentino, Andrew Tobias, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater

Written by Jonathan Tolins

Performed by Michael Urie

Outstanding Director

Alex Timbers, Here Lies Love

Outstanding Choreographer

Sonya Tayeh, Kung Fu

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Play

Steven Boyer, Hand to God

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Play

Tracee Chimo, Bad Jews

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Musical

Michael Cerveris, Fun Home