Pride's Crossing is a play by Tina Howe. It received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play and was a finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. [1]
The play focuses on 90-year-old Mabel Tidings Bigelow, who as a young woman was the first female to swim the English Channel from England to France. In her introduction to the play, Howe wrote, "For some time now I've wanted to write about the passion of old ladies." [2]
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Pride's Crossing was first produced at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego in January 1997. Directed by Jack O'Brien, it starred Cherry Jones as Mabel.
O'Brien and Jones reunited for the Lincoln Center Theatre production, which opened at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre on December 7, 1997 and closed on April 5, 1998 after 137 performances. The cast included Dylan Baker, Julia McIlvaine, David Lansbury, and Casey Biggs.
Ben Brantley of the New York Times said the play can "seem as garrulous and repetitive as a conversation-starved alumna at a 50-year college reunion. The affection that animates the play is evident . . . so is the dramatist's ear for the music in everyday conversation. But while Pride's Crossing is infused with Ms. Howe's lyrical sense of mortality and of the traps of sexual and social identity, this latest work from the author of Coastal Disturbances can also be like something its no-nonsense heroine might start to read and throw out as romantic hokum . . . Ms. Howe has said her works tend to alienate men because of her expressly feminine perspective. But the special flavor of her writing has more to do with a kind of whimsy that translates theatrical absurdism into costume-party cuteness." [3]
The play was revived at the off-Broadway T. Schreiber Studio from March 25 - April 18, 2004. Glenn Krutoff directed Tatjana Vujosevic as Mabel Tidings Bigelow. [4]
Tina Howe won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play and was a finalist for 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Cherry Jones won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play, and the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Actress. Kenneth Posner won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lighting Design.