Ben Brantley (@BenjBrantley) / X

Ben Brantley

2,986 posts

Ben Brantley

@BenjBrantley

reader and theatergoer

nyc

Joined April 2012

Ben Brantley
@BenjBrantley
Aug 23, 2022
Allow me to echo re "Into the Woods": There have been many talented interpreters of the Baker's Wife since Joanna Gleason brilliantly originated the role. But Sara Bareilles is the first I've seen to match Gleason's human complexity, while providing her own free-wheeling spin.
Ben Brantley
@BenjBrantley
Apr 24, 2022
She was actually on Broadway only twice, decades ago. Yet somehow she seems to hover there, always, as one of the great and enduring lights of the Broadway musical. Happy birthday to that star of stars, Barbra Streisand, who clearly leaves a lasting impression.
Ben Brantley
@BenjBrantley
Nov 26, 2021
Goodbye, Stephen Sondheim. Truly without peer. The vacuum left is incomparable; so is the legacy.
Ben Brantley
@BenjBrantley
Apr 8, 2025
Farewell to William Finn, whose musicals were truly unlike anyone else's. On Broadway in 1992, His "Falsettos" offered a sweet, wrenching and much needed catharsis in the darkest depths of the AIDS crisis. I remember leaving the theater with my shoulders heaving; I wasn't alone.
42K
Ben Brantley
@BenjBrantley
Oct 11, 2022
The first time I saw her, in 1973, she was sailing down the aisle of the Winter Garden Theater, puncturing the air with that inimitably piquant profile and purposefully calling, "Sing out, Louise!" And I fell in love forever. Farewell to the eternal Angela Lansbury.
Ben Brantley
@BenjBrantley
Sep 2, 2025
Am loving the continuing reincarnations of Mary Todd Lincoln (next: Jane Krakowski!), which confirm that the anarchic First Widow and cabaret artist can be embodied by anyone with a gift for the comedy of desperation. Cole Escola & co have redefined the art of Broadway casting.
39K
Ben Brantley
@BenjBrantley
Oct 17, 2022
I think this is the moment when Mandy Patinkin is supposed to step forward and still the cacophony by saying, "Order. Design. Tension. Balance. Harmony."
Ben Brantley
@BenjBrantley
Jun 17, 2024
New York theater as a religion doesn't have a more impassioned avatar than Jonathan Groff. I'm glad I stuck around.
53K
Ben Brantley
@BenjBrantley
Oct 8, 2023
It was never this good before. It will never be this good again. Maria Friedman's inspired reinvention of "Merrily We Roll Along" makes Broadway -- and Sondheim -- feel newly and fully alive again. The season's most essential show, with an unsurpassable triple act at its center.
110K
Ben Brantley
@BenjBrantley
Feb 28, 2022
Happy birthday to Bernadette Peters, whose voice is the sweetest trumpet sounded on Broadway. During a lifetime on stage, she has brought a child's wonder and a pro's discipline to every role she's played, creating -- among much else -- an unparalleled gallery of Sondheim women.
Ben Brantley
@BenjBrantley
Sep 30, 2024
This is awful. Gavin Creel has died at 48. He seemed born to channel and share the special joys of the American musical, and he did so in such a variety of parts, from the ingenuous hippie of "Hair" to the serpentine lothario of "She Loves Me." Also a swell Mormon in London.
27K
Ben Brantley
@BenjBrantley
Jan 30, 2024
Chita Rivera - who ruled Broadway stages as the original Anita, Rosie and Velma - has died. Though she was 91, I had kept expecting to see her perform at least one more time. She emanated that kind of energy that felt endlessly, improbably rechargeable. Farewell to a solar force.
49K
Ben Brantley
@BenjBrantley
Sep 27, 2024
Farewell to the peerless Maggie Smith, whose voice could stretch a single word into a prism of shades of disapproval, disappointment, amazement and amusement. She could commandeer a stage ("Lettice and Lovage") or a screen ("Bed Among the Lentils") with a single raised eyebrow.
24K
Ben Brantley
@BenjBrantley
Jun 10, 2022
She did not sing or speak false notes. Watch her screen performances from the 1930s and 40s, where she's a wellspring of sincerity in the midst of artifice. It's the centennial birthday of Judy Garland, the most uncannily translucent of stars.