1,428 stories by "Ben Brantley"
“Penelope,” from the Druid Theater, tells the story of the men trying to woo the title character after her husband, Odysseus, goes off to the Trojan War.
A cycle of a dozen plays follows foreign involvement in Afghanistan, its results and the lack thereof.
In a year that recapped some of New York theater’s least appealing aspects, a few productions made us remember the singular power of theater to astonish.
Mary Shelley’s monster is birthed onstage in London by the Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle, who has a keen sense of the trappings of life in this world.
At the closet-sized Finborough Theater, a novelist with a double life discovers that a knighthood comes with blackmail attached in "Accolade."
The workshop of Paul Simon's The Capeman was set in its proper urban element at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.
The performance artist John Kelly channels Egon Schiele in his reprise of “Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte,” at La MaMa.
Some successful Off Broadway shows just can’t make it on Broadway.
The acrobatics of love are performed in high style in “Brief Encounter,” which is surely the most enchanting work of stagecraft ever inspired by a movie.
Lisa Kron’s “In the Wake” at the Public Theater is a more conventionally naturalistic play than Ms. Kron’s memoir pieces, “Well” and “2.5 Min…
The responsibilities of being an audience member rarely weigh as heavily as in "I'm Not the Stranger You Think I Am," where short plays are performed in a 4 feet by 8 feet mobile structure.
After staging versions of "The Great Gatsby" and "The Sun Also Rises," a company tackles part of a notoriously difficult American classic.
Mr. Callow, the popular British character actor, portrays Pauline, who is trying to find a connection with her father who still thinks of her as his son.
Neil LaBute offers shocks as well as comforting pats on the arm in this play about the morning after a one-night stand, at Second Stage Theater.
This play about adolescent growing pains is a guilty memoir of a work by A. R. Gurney, revived at the Pershing Square Signature Center by the Signature Theater and Jim Simpson.
The Kander and Ebb musical, part of the Encores! series at New York City Center, also stars Zoë Wanamaker.
The chief theater critic of The New York Times makes his Tony Award choices.
From "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" to "An American in Paris," the Broadway season was filled with identity crises.
In Lemon Andersen's play about versifying behind bars, a convict can secure his status by being able to chant and riff in the form that gives the show its title.
Fiasco Theater's frolicking production makes a case for a little-loved comedy as a testament to the charms of vacillating youth.
With this show at La MaMa, an attack on institutionalized killing, Belarus Free Theater displays its customary razor-sharp commentary.
The 1968 musical adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis's novel "Zorba the Greek" is the final offering of this season's Encores! series of musicals in concert.
Five Indian women describe their experiences of sexual abuse in Yael Farber's harrowing documentary drama at the Lynn Redgrave Theater.
Ms. Rivera stars as a wealthy woman who returns to her Swiss hometown with a tempting proposal of murder in this macabre, long-gestating musical.
Unchecked enthusiasm and puns abound in this Broadway-does-the-Renaissance frolic, which namechecks pretty much every musical you've ever heard of.
