All stories by Ben Brantley on BroadwayStars

Thursday, January 14, 2016

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.

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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.

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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[SHARE]
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[SHARE]
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[SHARE]
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[SHARE]
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.

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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[SHARE]
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[SHARE]
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.

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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[SHARE]
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[SHARE]
Thursday, December 10, 2015

Review: In 'Oh Hello,' Sour and Crotchety Old Men at Their Best by Ben Brantley

Nick Kroll and John Mulaney don't so much portray their characters Gil and George as allow themselves to be taken over by them.

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Review: 'The Color Purple' on Broadway, Stripped to Its Essence by Ben Brantley

Under John Doyle's direction, this revival of the musical based on Alice Walker's novel forgoes sumptuousness in favor of vivid character development.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 11:28PM[SHARE]

The Week Ahead: Lois Smith Returns to the Stage With 'Marjorie Prime' by Ben Brantley

The actress, who made her Broadway debut in 1952, will star in the play at Playwrights Horizons.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:57PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, December 8, 2015

The Best Theater of 2015 by Ben Brantley and Charles Isherwood

"Hamilton," "An American in Paris" and "Eclipsed" are among the highlights.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:52PM[SHARE]
Monday, December 7, 2015

Review: David Bowie Songs and a Familiar Alien in 'Lazarus' by Ben Brantley

Michael C. Hall stars in Ivo van Hove's New York Theater Workshop production of this sequel to "The Man Who Fell to Earth."

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Sunday, December 6, 2015

Review: 'School of Rock' Teaches the ABCs of Power Chords by Ben Brantley

Starring a bouncing Super Ball of energy named Alex Brightman, this is Andrew Lloyd Webber's friskiest musical in decades.

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Friday, December 4, 2015

Review: In David Mamet's 'China Doll,' Al Pacino as an Urban Warrior in Winter by Ben Brantley

No play opening on Broadway this fall has had a more fraught back story, though star power always guaranteed a commercial slam dunk.

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Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Review: Exploring the Edge of Soap Opera in 'Shadowland' at La MaMa by Ben Brantley

John Jesurun's multimedia production at at La MaMa, a work in progress since the late '90s, views soap-opera conventions through a hallucinatory lens.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:22PM[SHARE]
Monday, November 30, 2015

Critic's Notebook: In 'Hamilton,' Javier Muñoz Puts a Different Spin on the Title Role by Ben Brantley

Mr. Muñoz brings a sexiness to his portrayal of Alexander Hamilton in this musical.

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Review: 'New York Animals,' a Musical About Intersecting Lives by Ben Brantley

Eric Tucker's Bedlam theater troupe performs this show from Steven Sater and Burt Bacharach at the New Ohio Theater.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:21PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Review: In 'Steve,' Contemplating Middle Age and Monogamy by Ben Brantley

This New Group production, directed by Cynthia Nixon, portrays a group of gay New Yorkers for whom life was once truly a cabaret.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:37PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Review: 'Abyss' Follows Characters Named 'He,' 'She' and 'I' in Love and War by Ben Brantley

The German playwright Maria Milisavljevic considers topical questions of European national identities in this play, at Theaterlab.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:34PM[SHARE]
Sunday, November 15, 2015

Review: In 'Misery,' With Bruce Willis and Laurie Metcalf, the Ghost of Productions Past by Ben Brantley

In this Broadway adaptation of Stephen King's thriller, Bruce Willis infuses his captive bedridden character with a wisecracking stoicism.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:40PM[SHARE]
Thursday, November 12, 2015

Review: 'A View From the Bridge' Bears Witness to the Pain of Fate by Ben Brantley

From its opening scene, Ivo van Hove's revival of Arthur Miller's play evokes an acute sense of dread and a relentless aura of grim predestination.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:54PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Review: 'Henry IV,' Donmar Warehouse's All-Female Version by Ben Brantley

Directed by Phyllida Lloyd and starring Harriet Walter, this production of two condensed Shakespeare plays reveals the desperation behind the bravado.

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

The Week Ahead: 'Incident at Vichy,' a Revival of Arthur Miller's Harrowing Wartime Drama by Ben Brantley

This play at the Signature Theater centers on a group of mostly Jewish detainees in Vichy France who struggle with denial, choices and fundamental questions of identity.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 11:46AM[SHARE]
Monday, November 9, 2015

Review: In 'Lost Girls,' Derailed Blue-Collar Lives, With Zingers by Ben Brantley

The playwright John Pollono is a deft practitioner of the sort of twist-in-the-tale narratives that are mostly associated with O. Henry and W. Somerset Maugham.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:28PM[SHARE]
Friday, November 6, 2015

Review: A 'Comedy of Errors' That Never Stands Still by Ben Brantley

The Mobile Shakespeare Unit's streamlined tale of two sets of separated twins comes to the Public Theater.

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Monday, November 2, 2015

Review: 'Rear Window,' the Perils of Voyeurism, With Kevin Bacon by Ben Brantley

Mr. Bacon stars in Keith Reddin's adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's crime story that also became a Hitchcock classic.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:38PM[SHARE]

All that Chat

2025-2026 BROADWAY SEASON
Jun 12, 2025: Call Me Izzy - Studio 54
Sep 16, 2025: Art - Music Box Theatre
Oct 08, 2025: Beetlejuice - Palace Theatre
Nov 13, 2025: Oedipus - Studio 54
Nov 16, 2025: Chess - Imperial Theatre
Mar 23, 2026: Giant - Music Box Theatre
Apr 06, 2026: Becky Shaw - Hayes Theater
Apr 16, 2026: Proof - Booth Theatre
Apr 26, 2026: Drama Desk Cut-Off