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Sunday, January 14, 2018

Review: A Fantasy Town Builds a Wall Against Time in 'Ballyturk' by Ben Brantley

Enda Walsh's wild cosmic farce, in which two men act out the life of a fantasy village, finds the aching emptiness in words, words, words

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:45PM[SHARE]

Friday, January 12, 2018

Review: Who Am I? 'Panorama' Says There Is No Easy Answer by Ben Brantley

In this multimedia, multidimensional performance piece, the boundaries of race, gender and ethnicity blur into a shifting pageant of identity.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:20PM[SHARE]

Thursday, January 11, 2018

5 Shows to See if You're in New York in January by Ben Brantley

For the new year, productions that aim to shake up your senses and challenge your assumptions. Plus: '80s jargon and hair.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:30PM[SHARE]

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Review: Dancing to Destruction in Enda Walsh's Fierce 'Disco Pigs' by Ben Brantley

This harrowing and exhilarating revival, featuring an inexhaustible cast of two, summons the agonies and ecstasies of being 17 in a blighted Irish town.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:15AM[SHARE]

Friday, January 5, 2018

Review: 'Hamilton' Conquers London (King George Slays Too) by Ben Brantley

The newcomer Jamael Westman steps out as a fully formed star in the title role of the triumphant London production of "Hamilton."

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:21PM[SHARE]

Thursday, January 4, 2018

Review: A Wondrous 'Pinocchio' With That 'Lion King' Magic by Ben Brantley

In a creative master stroke, this National Theater adaptation of the Disney film uses oversized puppets to play adults, who tower over the title figure.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:23AM[SHARE]

Sunday, December 17, 2017

Review: Mark Rylance Returns to Broadway as a Mad Monarch to Cherish by Ben Brantley

In Claire van Kampen's strange, enchanting "Farinelli and the King," from Shakespeare's Globe in London, music hath charms to spare.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:04PM[SHARE]

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Review: Finding Serenity in a Tempest-Tossed 'Twelfth Night' by Ben Brantley

Fiasco Theater's agreeable production of a much-performed play finds the clarity in a comedy of confusion.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:36PM[SHARE]

Thursday, December 7, 2017

Review: Dreaming of 'Home,' With a Magical Guide in His Underwear by Ben Brantley

Geoff Sobelle's hallucinatory performance piece at the Brooklyn Academy of Music is set in a house that comes to life before your eyes.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:18PM[SHARE]

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

The Best Theater of 2017 by Ben Brantley and Jesse Green

Our chief theater critics on their favorites this year, from "Bruce Springsteen on Broadway" to a host of playwrights tackling life's chaos.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:18PM[SHARE]

Monday, December 4, 2017

Review: 'SpongeBob SquarePants,' a Watery Wonderland on Broadway by Ben Brantley

This ginormous adaptation of the beloved Nickelodeon television series perfectly captures the innocently idiotic spirit of its prototype

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:04PM[SHARE]

Review: Waltzing With Love and Death in 'Hundred Days' by Ben Brantley

A revised version of a musical memoir from the Bengsons affectingly reimagines commitment-phobia in existential terms.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:04PM[SHARE]

Sunday, December 3, 2017

Review: Sleepwalking Through the '70s in 'Downtown Race Riot' by Ben Brantley

This narcoticized production of Seth Zvi Rosenfeld's play, starring a drug-glazed ChloÃ« Sevigny, revisits a dirty old New York of yore.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:54PM[SHARE]

Friday, December 1, 2017

Review: Sailing on Silly Seas With 'The Pirates of Penzance' by Ben Brantley

The Hypocrites' blithe production of the Gilbert and Sullivan classic offers the perfect restorative alternative to holiday drudgery.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:04PM[SHARE]

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Review: 'The Fountainhead,' High-Tech, Juicy and Full of Pulp by Ben Brantley

Ivo van Hove's hypnotic adaptation of Ayn Rand's notorious 1943 novel speaks to the primitive narcissist in all of us. (Mr. Trump, are you listening?)

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:18PM[SHARE]

Sunday, November 26, 2017

Brantley in Britain: Eye-Openers in London: 19th-Century Women with 21st-Century Problems by Ben Brantley

Revivals of plays by Ibsen and Wilde, and a new work about the young Karl Marx, find strong women chafing under the yoke of dominating men

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:18PM[SHARE]

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Brantley in Britain: Showgirls, a Monster and a Drag Queen: Singing Songs of Self by Ben Brantley

New musicals on London's stages include a merciless and compassionate "Follies," a revitalized "Young Frankenstein" and a timely saga of an aspiring drag queen.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 07:04PM[SHARE]

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Review: 'The Wolves' Are Back in a Rush of Combustible Energy by Ben Brantley

Sarah DeLappe's remarkably assured first play, a group portrait of a girls' soccer team, is now at Lincoln Center Theater.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:04PM[SHARE]

Friday, November 17, 2017

Brantley in Britain: Review: Agatha Christie's Murder Most Orderly and the Comfiest Seats in London by Ben Brantley

A site-specific revival of "Witness for the Prosecution" finds the comfort factor in a murder trial.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 07:04PM[SHARE]

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Brantley in Britain: Review: 'Network,' With Bryan Cranston Is Convulsive, Immersive and Still Mad as Hell by Ben Brantley

A stage adaptation, directed by Ivo van Hove, confirms the prophecy of a 1976 movie about populist rage and manipulative technology

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 08:48AM[SHARE]

Monday, November 13, 2017

Brantley in Britain: On London Stages, Britain Considers Its Divided Soul by Ben Brantley

New plays from Mike Bartlett and James Graham pose E.M. Forster's newly urgent question of who inherits England

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:33PM[SHARE]

Friday, November 10, 2017

Review: Charles Ludlam in the Cosmos Where 'Queens Collide' by Ben Brantley

Everett Quinton's frantic revival of an intergalactic farce from 1967 reveals Charles Ludlam as a pioneer of cultural recycling.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 11:33AM[SHARE]

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Review: 'The Band's Visit' Is a Ravishing Musical That Whispers With Romance by Ben Brantley

This singularly seductive show, based on an Israeli film, finds the ecstasy in ennui in a small desert town.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:04PM[SHARE]

Thursday, November 2, 2017

Review: 'Junk' Revives a Go-Go Era of Debt and Duplicity by Ben Brantley

Ayad Akhtar, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Disgraced," explores the shady side of 1980s Wall Street in an economics lesson of a play.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:12PM[SHARE]

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

5 Shows to See if You're in New York in November by Ben Brantley

"Brigadoon" appears (briefly), Amy Schumer steps onto Broadway and an acclaimed musical returns to a bigger stage.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:12AM[SHARE]

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Review: 'The B-Side' Is an Extraordinary Masterclass in Listening by Ben Brantley

Vinyl sings across the decades in the Wooster Group's transcendent presentation of a 1965 album of songs from a Texas chain gang.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:33PM[SHARE]

Monday, October 30, 2017

Review: 'Illyria' Eavesdrops on a Young Joe Papp and Friends by Ben Brantley

Richard Nelson's murmur of a play is set at a momentous time in the Manhattan theater world of the 1950s.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:06PM[SHARE]

Sunday, October 29, 2017

Review: 'Knives in Hens,' a Wondrous Drama of the Lust for Language by Ben Brantley

David Harrower's remarkable play, depicting a romantic triangle in a desolate, premodern world, finally receives its New York premiere.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 04:18PM[SHARE]

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Review: 'M. Butterfly' Returns to Broadway on Heavier Wings by Ben Brantley

A powerful Clive Owen is the best thing about the didactic revival of David Henry Hwang's breakthrough look at sexual delusion and East-West relations.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:12PM[SHARE]

Tuesday, October 24, 2017