All stories by Ben Brantley on BroadwayStars

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Review: A Darwinian ‘Streetcar’ With a Feminist Streak by Ben Brantley

“A Streetcar Named Desire,” directed by Benedict Andrews, is a brave take on a classic play that envelops the audience in a timelessly primeval world.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:13PM
Thursday, April 28, 2016

Review: ‘Shuffle Along’ Returns to Broadway’s Embrace by Ben Brantley

It shares its name and most of its song list with a landmark musical from 1921, so is it old or new?

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:25PM
Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Review: ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ Is a Tempest in a Bourbon Bottle by Ben Brantley

The production, starring Gabriel Byrne, Jessica Lange, Michael Shannon and John Gallagher Jr., features some heavy-weather acting.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:28PM
Friday, April 22, 2016

Review: ‘A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing’ Is a Ghostly Play by Ben Brantley

Aoife Duffin stars in this story of a rebellious Irish girl, based on the novel of the same name by Eimear McBride.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:37PM

Review: ‘Empathy School & Love Story’ Plumbs the Varieties of Loneliness by Ben Brantley

The settings for these monologues summon feelings of isolation in a crowd: a bus traveling by night through the heartland and the streets of New York.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 04:54PM
Thursday, April 21, 2016

Review: ‘American Psycho’ Hits Broadway, So Smooth, So Rich, So Ruthless by Ben Brantley

A musical based on Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel has buckets of blood and robust hardbodies to spare.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:19PM
Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Review: ‘Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.’ Captures the Fury of Modern Womanhood by Ben Brantley

Alice Birch’s short, sharp shock of a play has a ferocious energy as it addresses women and their relationships with men, one another and a world in upheaval.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:21PM
Thursday, April 14, 2016

Review: ‘The Father’ Examines the Lion’s Mind in Winter by Ben Brantley

Frank Langella stars as a man wrestling with dementia in this play, a hit in Paris and London.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:39PM

The Week Ahead: ‘Blood at the Root’ Draws Inspiration From the Jena Six Case in Louisiana by Ben Brantley

This work by Dominique Morisseau, directed by Steve Broadnax, has toured globally, bringing difficult discussions of race and justice along with it.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:52PM
Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Review: ‘Antlia Pneumatica,’ With Voices in the Dark by Ben Brantley

Anne Washburn’s play, at Playwrights Horizons, brings old friends together for a funeral and blurs the borders between worlds.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:36AM
Thursday, March 31, 2016

Review: In Arthur Miller’s ‘Crucible,’ First They Came for the Witches by Ben Brantley

Arthur Miller’s endlessly revived historical drama from 1953 suddenly feels like the freshest, scariest play in town.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:24PM

Review: ‘1776,’ a Musical Portrait of Squabbling Politicians by Ben Brantley

This stately concert production at City Center, part of Encores!, underscores the agonizing labor that momentous change often involves.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:02PM
Wednesday, March 30, 2016

The Week Ahead: New Broadway-Worthy Songs for Your Head by Ben Brantley

Broadway composers like Tom Kitt and Jason Robert Brown take part in a concert at Symphony Space intended to lodge some new tunes between your ears.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 08:24AM
Monday, March 28, 2016

Review: In ‘Head of Passes,’ Phylicia Rashad Is a Matriarch With Worries by Ben Brantley

This Tarell Alvin McCraney play centers on family fissures and a woman whose loved ones have gathered for her birthday.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:24PM
Sunday, March 27, 2016

Review: ‘The Seagull and Other Birds’ Turned Upside Down by Ben Brantley

The experimental Irish troupe Pan Pan turns one of modern drama’s seminal works inside out.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:32PM
Friday, March 25, 2016

Review: ‘The Hundred We Are’ Explores Aging and Delusion by Ben Brantley

This Origin Theater production by Jonas Hassen Khemiri, at the Cell in Chelsea, follows a woman at war with herself.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:27PM
Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Review: ‘Really’ Compares the Fixed Image With Life’s Flux by Ben Brantley

Jackie Sibblies Drury’s stylishly contemplative new play is a meditation on the nature of photography.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:25PM
Monday, March 21, 2016

Review: ‘Wolf in the River,’ Adam Rapp’s Latest Tale of the Dysfunctional and Dispossessed by Ben Brantley

This new play, performed by the Bats, the Flea Theater’s resident company, centers on a wistful 16-year-old surrounded by a feral and violent clan.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:24PM
Sunday, March 20, 2016

Review: ‘The Effect,’ About Falling in Love While Taking Antidepressants by Ben Brantley

Lucy Prebble’s play at the Barrow Street Theater centers on a young man and woman who question their emotions during a four-week pharmaceutical trial.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:22PM
Friday, March 18, 2016

Review: ‘Krapp’s Last Tape,’ a Melancholy Tone Poem by Ben Brantley

Robert Wilson, as director, designer and actor, reinvents Beckett’s play at the Alexander Kasser Theater in Montclair, N.J.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:50PM
Thursday, March 17, 2016

Review: ‘She Loves Me’ Is a Daydream of the Ordinary by Ben Brantley

The 1963 musical set in a 1930s perfume shop in Budapest has been rapturously revived by the Roundabout Theater Company.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:30PM
Monday, March 14, 2016

Review: Kenneth Lonergan’s ‘Hold On to Me Darling,’ a Study of Bad Faith (and Behavior) by Ben Brantley

In Mr. Lonergan’s play, a narcissistic country music and movie star returns to the Tennessee town where he grew up to start a new life as a simple man.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:26PM
Sunday, March 13, 2016

Review: ‘The Robber Bridegroom’ Is Heavy on the Twang by Ben Brantley

This Alex Timbers revival includes a bluegrass band and a rogues’ gallery of oddball comic performers in this musical based on a Eudora Welty novella.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:18PM
Thursday, March 10, 2016

Review: ‘Blackbird’: The Past Returns, Taunting by Ben Brantley

David Harrower’s disturbing drama of criminal love returns in a Broadway staging starring Jeff Daniels and Michelle Williams.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:27PM

Review: In ‘Boy,’ a Man Deals With Gender Cards He’s Given (Not Born With) by Ben Brantley

In Anna Ziegler’s play, Bobby Steggert plays a character — based on an actual person — who was born male but raised female after a botched circumcision.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:27PM
Monday, March 7, 2016

Review: ‘The Royale’ Harks Back to the Fighter Jack Johnson by Ben Brantley

This Marco Ramirez play, which takes place in the early 20th century, is set amid the sport of boxing and recreates the racism of the day.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:21PM
Sunday, March 6, 2016

Review: ‘Hungry’ Portrays a Mourning Clan in Election Year 2016 by Ben Brantley

In Richard Nelson’s play at the Public Theater, the characters’ bereavement is laced with a sense that the world as they know it is coming to an end.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:10PM
Thursday, March 3, 2016

Review: ‘Rimbaud in New York’ Splices the Genes of the Original Outlaw Artist by Ben Brantley

This collage tribute piece celebrates the French poet Arthur Rimbaud as the man who invented downtown as a state of mind.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 07:46PM

In Anna Ziegler’s ‘Boy,’ an Ambiguous Gender Is Explored Onstage by Ben Brantley

Anna Ziegler’s new play tells the story of a boy who was mutilated in an accident and then raised as a girl.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:50PM
Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Review: ‘But I Cd Only Whisper,’ a Tale of a Violent Veteran by Ben Brantley

Kristiana Rae Colón’s play at the Flea Theater portrays an unthinkable crime and its origins and aftermath.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:45PM
Monday, February 29, 2016

Review: In ‘The Wildness,’ Defenses Against Adulthood by Ben Brantley

In this tuneful production by Lauren Worsham and Kyle Jarrow, friends gather at the start of the new year to retell and play out a fairy tale of their own.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:20PM

All that Chat

2024-2025 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 05, 2024: Home - Todd Haimes Theatre
Jul 11, 2024: Oh, Mary! - Lyceum Theatre
Jul 30, 2024: Job - Hayes Theater
Sep 12, 2024: The Roommate - Booth Theatre
Nov 14, 2024: Tammy Faye - Palace Theatre
Dec 12, 2024: Cult of Love - Hayes Theater
Dec 19, 2024: Gypsy - Majestic Theatre
Mar 17, 2025: Purpose - Hayes Theater
Apr 01, 2025: Glengarry Glen Ross
Apr 10, 2025: Smash - Imperial Theatre
TBA: Titanic