All stories by Ben Brantley on BroadwayStars

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
Friday, February 26, 2016

Review: You See ‘The Encounter’ With Your Ears by Ben Brantley

In the play, by Simon McBurney at the Barbican Theater in London, audience members are asked to put on headphones and listen closely.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:27PM

Review: ‘I’ll Never Love Again,’ From a Teenage Girl’s Diary by Ben Brantley

Clare Barron’s play at the Bushwick Starr in Brooklyn recalls the anguishing mysteries of sex and love during adolescence.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:06PM
Thursday, February 25, 2016

Review: In ‘Hughie,’ With Forest Whitaker, Two Desolate Lost Souls by Ben Brantley

The actor makes his Broadway debut in this one-act play by Eugene O’Neill.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:57PM
Friday, February 19, 2016

Critic's Notebook: The Anger on London’s Stages Is Palpable, and Thrilling by Ben Brantley

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “The Master Builder” and “Uncle Vanya” are all studies in the power of rage.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:01PM
Thursday, February 18, 2016

Shame and Guilt Drives Several New Productions, Which is Good for Us by Ben Brantley

Some unpleasant emotions are at the heart of “Hughie,” “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” “The Crucible” and “Hold On to Me, Darling.”

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:15PM
Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Review: In Shepard’s ‘Buried Child,’ a Father and Family Dissolve Into Darkness by Ben Brantley

This revival of the award-winning American gothic play stars Amy Madigan and Ed Harris as parents in a dysfunctional Illinois farmhouse.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:25PM
Monday, February 15, 2016

Review: In ‘Funny Girl,’ Sheridan Smith Does the Heavy Lifting by Ben Brantley

In this revival, Ms. Smith plays Fanny Brice, the role that sent Barbra Streisand soaring into the stratosphere in the 1960s.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:06PM
Sunday, February 14, 2016

Critic’s Notebook: For ‘Hangmen’ and ‘Escaped Alone,’ Connecting Threads in London by Ben Brantley

Martin McDonagh and Caryl Churchill’s two plays, so different, are united by extreme narrative tension.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:08PM
Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Review: ‘Prodigal Son,’ John Patrick Shanley’s Exploration of the Student He Once Was by Ben Brantley

This Manhattan Theater Club play depicts a self-worshiping, caustic pupil who intrigues and frustrates his boarding-school teachers.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:24PM
Friday, February 5, 2016

The Week Ahead: Target Margin Theater Takes On Eugene O’Neill by Ben Brantley

The company begins a two-season project devoted to the writer, starting with “Drunken With What,” which excavates “Mourning Becomes Electra.”

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

Review: A Whirlwind of Delicious Gossip in ‘Sense & Sensibility’ by Ben Brantley

Bedlam theater company’s version of the Jane Austen novel expands and magnifies Austen’s delicate comic worldview without cracking a single teacup.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:46AM
Sunday, January 31, 2016

Review: ‘The Grand Paradise’ Summons a ’70s Pleasure Palace by Ben Brantley

This immersive play conjures a Florida resort built on nostalgia and losing one’s inhibitions.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:46PM
Friday, January 29, 2016

Review: In ‘Tonight/Jungle’ by Philip Ridley, Darkness Rules by Ben Brantley

These two plays — “Tonight With Donny Stixx” and “Dark Vanilla Jungle,” playing in repertory at Here — consist of monologues by people who have committed unspeakable crimes.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:16PM
Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Review: ‘I and You’ Is Lauren Gunderson’s Sentimental Character Study by Ben Brantley

This play revolves around two high school students and a link to Walt Whitman.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:34PM
Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Review: ‘Our Mother’s Brief Affair,’ a Play About Unmoored Lives by Ben Brantley

Richard Greenberg juxtaposes a generational then and now to consider how little we know about the lives that shape our own.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:33PM
Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Review: ‘Skeleton Crew,’ a Tale of Autoworkers in Hard-Hit Detroit by Ben Brantley

This final work in Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit trilogy is a deeply moral and deeply American play, with compassion for people trapped by circumstances.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:34PM
Friday, January 15, 2016

Review: Jason Craig’s ‘Longyarn’ Features a Mom Who Won’t Shut Up by Ben Brantley

Banana Bag & Bodice’s new production at the Bushwick Starr owes a debt to Beckett but is exuberantly American.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 07:04PM
Thursday, January 14, 2016

In Alan Rickman the Stage Actor, an Erotic Blend of Desire and Conscience by Ben Brantley

Though best known for the “Die Hard” and “Harry Potter” movies, he was even more compelling as a serpentine seducer onstage.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 07:35PM

Review: ‘Confirmation’ Asks You to Please Stop Thinking Like Yourself by Ben Brantley

The one-man play, by Chris Thorpe, looks at confirmation bias, and tries to make the audience truly consider another person’s competing viewpoint.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 07:35PM
Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Review: ‘Now I’m Fine,’ Ahamefule J. Oluo’s Take on Himself by Ben Brantley

Mr. Oluo and a team of performers manage to be expansive and engaging in this musical memoir at the Public Theater.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:36PM
Monday, January 11, 2016

Review: In ‘The Holler Sessions,’ a D.J. as True Believer by Ben Brantley

Frank Boyd plays a hard-core music obsessive in this piece, staged as if it were a live radio show at the Coil Festival.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:04PM
Sunday, January 10, 2016

Review: Shedding Skins in Motus’s Genre-Blurring ‘MDLSX’ at La MaMa by Ben Brantley

In this play, at La MaMa Downstairs, Silvia Calderoni takes on many guises and expounds on the inadequacy of our vocabulary.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:49PM
Saturday, January 9, 2016

Review: ‘Go Forth’ Finds the Living and the Dead Bound Together by Ben Brantley

This play, by Kaneza Schaal, explores the act of mourning. It is part of the Coil festival.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 11:26AM
Thursday, January 7, 2016

Review: ‘Germinal’ Sheds a Light on Creativity and All Creation by Ben Brantley

This show from France, part of the Under the Radar Festival, reinvents a creation myth, tracing the evolution of human consciousness.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:10PM
Wednesday, January 6, 2016

The Week Ahead: ‘MDLSX,’ From the Troupe Motus, Comes to La MaMa Downstairs by Ben Brantley

Silvia Calderoni, a longtime member of this boundary-defying international theater company, examines gender in an autobiographical show.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:13PM
Sunday, December 27, 2015

Checking Back: ‘Kinky Boots’ With Wayne Brady a Cross-Dresser You Could Take Home to Mother by Ben Brantley

This Broadway show’s latest star plays a cabaret drag artist with broad, wholesome appeal.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:08PM
Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Checking Back: ‘The King and I,’ With Hoon Lee as a More Tragic Monarch by Ben Brantley

Mr. Lee, who stepped in as His Majesty in September, invests his character with a wit and poignancy and an electric attraction to Kelli O’Hara’s Anna.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:44AM
Thursday, December 17, 2015

Review: Adding the Women’s Side to the ‘Diner’ Menu by Ben Brantley

With help from the singer Sheryl Crow and the director Kathleen Marshall, Barry Levinson has made a musical of his 1982 buddy film that promotes its female roles.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:09PM

Review: In ‘Marjorie Prime,’ Lois Smith Connects With the Past by Ben Brantley

This play, written by Jordan Harrison and directed by Anne Kauffman, centers on an 85-year-old woman who gets help from a re-creation of her dead husband.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 11:19AM
Sunday, December 13, 2015

Review: In ‘Once Upon a Mattress,’ Jackie Hoffman as Paradoxical Charmer by Ben Brantley

Ms. Hoffman, in the role Carol Burnett originated in 1959, is a vocal slapstick artist of both speech and song, shifting registers and styles with madcap virtuosity.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:45PM

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