Tuesday, December 17, 2024
New York theater’s elder statesman of the avant-garde brings “Suppose Beautiful Madeline Harvey” to the stage, hist first new work in over a decade.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:36PMMonday, December 2, 2024
In her various incarnations, the “Gypsy” character is always loud, always scary, but so different. Ben Brantley reflects on all the onstage Roses he has known.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:12AMWednesday, September 4, 2024
The longtime friends are appearing together in the new Broadway play “The Roommate.” Everything you think you know about them may be wrong.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:32AMThursday, September 28, 2023
The actor conveyed the gravitational force of mortality, tugging the men he played so commandingly toward a void beyond meaning, our critic writes.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:33PMTuesday, September 12, 2023
Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez and Daniel Radcliffe are the heart of the tear-streaked “Merrily We Roll Along” Broadway revival.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:33AMThursday, September 7, 2023
“Leading Lady,” a mosaic of reminiscence and self-analysis, explores the ascent of a man who’s really good at playing women.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:33PMThursday, June 15, 2023
“I had been prepared to be awed, intimidated, even terrified,” Ben Brantley writes of meeting the actress in person five years ago.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:13PMMonday, April 24, 2023
Audiences were eager to humbly suffer the stinging quips tossed out by the towering figure that was Barry Humphries’s creation.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:06AMThursday, December 8, 2022
Maria Friedman’s productions of the show in London and Boston were hits. Now a starry cast is preparing to open her latest staging Off Broadway.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 11:24AMMonday, December 6, 2021
The actor, who died at the age of 72, was known for his commanding performances of Shakespeare’s Richard III and the Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:33AMSaturday, April 17, 2021
Wednesday, March 31, 2021
On a thrilling trip to New York, a 16-year-old budding critic learned that the insistent optimism of musical theater was a beautiful lie.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:42AMTuesday, November 3, 2020
The New York Times theater critic, who stepped down after 27 years, recently responded to readers, including one hungry for a do-over on his review of a blockbuster musical.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:42PMSaturday, October 17, 2020
After 27 years on the job, the writer Ben Brantley bids farewell with one last recommendation: Watch a show as if you were a reviewer.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:48AMTuesday, October 13, 2020
After 27 years and more than 2,500 reviews, The Times’s co-chief theater critic reviews his own tenure and talks about why he’s (quietly) making an exit.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 07:03AMWednesday, October 7, 2020
In a few minutes or a full show, these performers capture heartbreak, fury and laughs. For the words of Samuel Beckett, a disembodied mouth did the trick.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:24AMSelf-aware, self-conscious or self-deluding, it’s a form as old as theater itself. And it’s flourishing in a time of social isolation.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:24AMSunday, September 20, 2020
In this enthralling streaming production of Brian Friel’s 1979 play, an itinerant miracle worker is grounded in a gritty reality.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:48PMFriday, September 11, 2020
Richard Nelson’s profound conclusion to his Zoom-format trilogy about the Apple siblings examines the perils of conversation in 2020.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:12PMFriday, August 28, 2020
This streamed reading of Beth Henley’s slice of Southern noir offers scorching portraits of bad faith from Ed Harris, Amy Madigan and Bill Pullman.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:48PMWednesday, August 26, 2020
Today we stream what shows we can find. Back then: James Dean, “Twelve Angry Men” and conclusive proof that Kim Stanley was one of the all-time greats.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:42AMMonday, August 17, 2020
This streaming piece by Abigail and Shaun Bengson translates the agonies and ecstasies of lockdown into a cosmic hootenanny at his folks’ house.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 04:36PMSaturday, August 8, 2020
The Berkshire Theater Group put on the first professional musical in the U.S. since the pandemic lockdown, and it’s a revival in every sense.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:02PMWednesday, July 8, 2020
Our critics discuss the last four months, which thanks to Zoom (and Meryl Streep) have been full of experimentation and playfulness.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:54AMSunday, June 28, 2020
In Duncan Macmillan’s play, streaming live from the Old Vic, the stars of “The Crown” play a contradictory couple in an age of isolation.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:03PMMonday, June 22, 2020
They’re never gone: Star turns from Ralph Fiennes, Meryl Streep, Gregory Hines and Christopher Plummer still live in the mind’s eye of readers.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 04:54PMFriday, June 12, 2020
From the documentary works of Anna Deavere Smith to brief monologues written in this moment of unrest, dramatists are sounding an alarm.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 07:03PMThursday, June 4, 2020
Miranda’s rap. Rylance’s poems. Jackman’s pelvis. And a brassy reunion for Bea Arthur and Angela Lansbury. Now set your clock for “Turkey Lurkey Time.”
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:18PMTuesday, June 2, 2020
The Belarus Free Theater’s livestreaming, mind-bending adaptation of Sasha Sokolov’s poetic novel assumes the bifocal eye-view of a divided self.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:54PMSunday, May 31, 2020
For stuck-at-homes feeling like submerging into the existential depths of no-exit theater, here’s a list of works to read and to watch.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:36PMThursday, May 28, 2020
Unforgettable moments lost to time, from Christopher Plummer to Jennifer Holliday, now more than ever remind us of theater’s special resonance.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:18AM 
