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Ben Brantley

Articles written by the author

Entertainment
8 Aug 2024
NEW YORK — Deep, imperious and thundering with an angry irony, the voice precedes the man. When it first tears through the darkness, amplified to eardrum-rattling volume, you sense a collective quickening of pulses at the Daryl Roth Theater, where a somber and monotonous new variation on “Cyrano de Bergerac” opened Thursday night.
'Cyrano': Again, an Underestimated Outsider
Entertainment
8 Aug 2024
NEW YORK — They’re speaking more softly in Richard Nelson’s Rhinebeck these days, as if a raised voice might upset a tenuous balance. Not that any of the previous seven (and wonderful) family dramas written by Nelson during the past nine years, all set in the Hudson River town of Rhinebeck, New York, have ever involved much shouting.
'The Michaels' Review: Life and Death Do a Delicate Dance
Entertainment
7 Aug 2024
NEW YORK — Even within the gruesome history of torture and execution devices, it ranks as a thing of unspeakable cruelty — a harrow that punctures the skin of the convicted prisoner by writing the crime of which he has been accused on the surface of his naked body, over and over again.
Entertainment
6 Aug 2024
LONDON — Has a vampire had its way with “All About Eve”? The anemic spectacle now sleepwalking across the stage of the Noël Coward Theater here shares a title, characters and much of its dialogue with Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Oscar-winning 1950 film about the glamorous narcissists who inhabit the dark and glittering world of Broadway.
Entertainment
25 Jun 2024
NEW YORK — A promising buzz of suspense stirs the opening moments of “The Wrong Man,” Ross Golan’s solemn new chamber musical, which opened Wednesday at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space in Manhattan. A lone, ominous whistle; a searchlight raking the darkness; a throng of tense-bodied men and women looking furtive — such gratifyingly classic notes of noir are sounded before a single word is sung.
'The Wrong Man': A Universal Nightmare Set to Song
Entertainment
25 Jun 2024
NEW YORK — You thought tropical storms were disruptive? The Italian Americans living along the Gulf Coast in the Roundabout Theater Company’s untethered revival of Tennessee Williams’ “The Rose Tattoo” are really up against the elements, and so are the actors playing them.
Review: Marisa Tomei Braves a Typhoon in 'The Rose Tattoo'
Entertainment
25 Jun 2024
NEW YORK — The everyday poison known as toxic masculinity becomes dangerously easy to swallow in “Linda Vista,” Tracy Letts’s inspired, ruthless take on the classic midlife-crisis comedy. In the sunny opening scenes of this very funny, equally unsettling Steppenwolf Theater production — which opened on Thursday at the Hayes Theater — you’ll probably feel like cozying up to that sheepish, disheveled big guy who rules the stage with his outspoken wit.
'Linda Vista' Review: A Womanizer Who Devastates as He Charms
Entertainment
25 Jun 2024
NEW YORK — In the midst of the solemn starkness of “The Prisoner,” the new play by Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne, there’s a moment you will want to memorize and nurture. The title character, a young man who will soon begin serving a long sentence in a desert, is allowed one last visit to the forest where he played as a child.
'The Prisoner': Some Prisons Don't Have Cells
Entertainment
25 Jun 2024
NEW YORK — Here she comes again. Cher, our lady of the sunshine plaids and a take-charge kind of gal, has commandeered a New York stage to preen on. And in this festive season of getting and spending, she is eager to usher nostalgic admirers down her own special memory lane, which looks a lot like Rodeo Drive.
'Clueless: The Musical': When Charm Is Swapped for Sparkle