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Byline: Ben Brantley 'Sweet and sour?' Patti LuPone suggested, as if considering options on a menu. She looked questioningly at Mia Farrow, who was sitting next to her in a [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley The actor conveyed the gravitational force of mortality, tugging the men he played so commandingly toward a void beyond meaning, our critic writes. Even in silence, he [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley What promises to be the most passionate love story of the new Broadway season is a tale of three people. Like many triangles, this one involves jealousy, [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley 'Leading Lady,' a mosaic of reminiscence and self-analysis, explores the ascent of a man who's really good at playing women. Charles Busch, the celebrated male actress, Tony-nominated [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley 'I had been prepared to be awed, intimidated, even terrified,' Ben Brantley writes of meeting the actress in person five years ago. She didn't so much enter [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley Audiences were eager to humbly suffer the stinging quips tossed out by the towering figure that was Barry Humphries's creation. She was, lest we forget, the original [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley Maria Friedman's productions of the show in London and Boston were hits. Now a starry cast is preparing to open her latest staging Off Broadway. In the [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley Ever since Stephen Sondheim died last month, certain images have been flaring in my head, so insistently that I have to catch my breath. They come with [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley The actor, who died at the age of 72, was known for his commanding performances of Shakespeare's Richard III and the Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi. To watch [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley She was unforgettable onstage playing seemingly serene women who rippled with restlessness. Selfishly, my first feelings on hearing that the uncanny British actress Helen McCrory had died [...]

Byline: Jesse Green and Ben Brantley After 27 years and more than 2,500 reviews, The Times's co-chief theater critic reviews his own tenure and talks about why he's (quietly) making [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley In this enthralling streaming production of Brian Friel's 1979 play, an itinerant miracle worker is grounded in a gritty reality. The first time I ever saw Michael [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley Today we stream what shows we can find. Back then: James Dean, 'Twelve Angry Men' and conclusive proof that Kim Stanley was one of the all-time greats. [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley The Berkshire Theater Group put on the first professional musical in the U.S. since the pandemic lockdown, and it's a revival in every sense. PITTSFIELD, Mass. - [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley, Jesse Green and Maya Phillips Our critics discuss the last four months, which thanks to Zoom (and Meryl Streep) have been full of experimentation and playfulness. The [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley The streaming concert 'Take Me to the World,' featuring a gallery of musical stars, honors the probing ambivalence of a master songwriter. These ever-surprising songs, mostly written [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley This ravishing and singular musical, written and directed by Conor McPherson, hears America singing - Dylan - during the Great Depression. A nation is broken. Life savings [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley Lauren Yee's ambitious, tonally mixed play uses bait-and-switch tactics to approach the dark heart of a genocidal regime. Clap your hands, everybody, and sing along with Pol! [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley Ivo van Hove's attention-splintering revival of the immortal 1957 musical features new choreography, a ravishing orchestra and smothering visual effects. No one should be surprised to hear [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley Compelling revivals make 'Endgame' (with Alan Cumming and Daniel Radcliffe) and 'Far Away' feel more unsettlingly relevant than ever. LONDON - The title alone would seem to [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley This murky and tedious reworking of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's dark fable of love and lucre is illuminated by Lesley Manville's dazzling star turn. LONDON - Nobody does implacable [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley In what he says will probably be his last work, a master playwright finds urgent lessons for the present in the past of a Viennese family. LONDON [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley Yaël Farber's stunning, Dublin-born interpretation of this eternal classic finds the dizzying layers of performance that rule all our lives. The prince is, on first impression, a [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley The New Group's musical adaptation of Paul Mazursky's 1969 movie, featuring Suzanne Vega, doesn't smirk but it doesn't soar, either. The sirens of sexual revolution sing with [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley In Martin Crimp's time-bending version of the Rostand 'Cyrano de Bergerac,' directed by Jamie Lloyd, people make love and war through glorious language. LONDON - A bright [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley New takes on beloved works by Elena Ferrante, Anton Chekhov and Neil Gaiman testify to the pleasures and perils of adaptation. LONDON - Shall we all speed-read [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley A brassy celebration of optimism and urbanity, 'Put on Your Sunday Clothes' from 'Hello, Dolly!' can still stir the emotions. Every time I pass the Yonkers train [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley Breadth doesn't always equal depth in Matthew Lopez's supersize, vividly painted portrait of gay life in the 21st century, featuring E.M. Forster as a spirit guide. Ardent [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley This jubilant production, choreographed by Annie-B Parson, transforms an icon of alienation into a cosmically cozy senior statesman. Won't you be his neighbor? David Byrne doesn't actually [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley PARIS - Peter Brook keeps saying why. Speaking of his storied life in the theater from a high, airy flat near the Bois de Boulogne, in the [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley Mr. Hiddleston, Zawe Ashton and Charlie Cox portray three friends in flux in Jamie Lloyd's revelatory interpretation of a Harold Pinter classic. How can a naked space [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley Andrew Scott, John Malkovich and Clive Owen are among the West End actors portraying men hopelessly in thrall to erotic impulses. LONDON - Garry Essendine, the celebrated [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley Jonathan Cake finds the cracks in the macho surface of Shakespeare's strangest tragic hero in Daniel Sullivan's fiery production in Central Park. Forget about the mutants at [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley Forbidden pleasures abound in this spectacular musical, starring a dazzling Karen Olivo as a doomed Parisian chanteuse. This one's for the hedonists. All you party people should [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley The newly appointed preacher, rehearsing what is likely to be the most important sermon he'll ever deliver, says that God has shown him that 'where there is [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley The biggest bang happens before even a word is spoken in the Signature Theater's revival of Sam Shepard's 'Curse of the Starving Class.' Within the opening seconds [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley Did you hear the one about the guy who sells his soul to the devil? How about the story in which an entire country does the same [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley A mighty sigh - equal parts frustration and resignation - seems to animate 'Hillary and Clinton,' Lucas Hnath's piquant, slender new play about ⦠well, it's about [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley Adam Driver is a great disrupter. This volcanic actor's entrance in the lopsided new revival of Lanford Wilson's 'Burn This,' which opened on Tuesday at the Hudson [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley How is it that the coolest new show on Broadway in 2019 is a 1943 musical usually regarded as a very square slice of American pie? The [...]

Byline: Ben Brantley Could we please have a little quiet? There's a great actress onstage at the Cort Theater, and I'd like to hear what she's saying. That was the [...]

Byline: BEN BRANTLEY For your sins, Bryan Cranston is all but flaying the skin off his body, night after night at the Belasco Theater. It is a demanding undertaking, both [...]

Byline: JESSE GREEN and BEN BRANTLEY How to take on a one-ton gorilla? We sent both of our chief critics to 'King Kong,' the $35 million, Australian-born musical that opened [...]

Byline: BEN BRANTLEY In life, drama queens, those extravagantly emotional beings who suck up all the oxygen in a room, are fatiguing souls, to be avoided at all costs when [...]

Byline: BEN BRANTLEY From the moment Gladys Green opens her mouth -- which is the moment that the curtain rises on Kenneth Lonergan's wonderful play 'The Waverly Gallery' at the [...]

Byline: BEN BRANTLEY No matter what sort of spread you've planned for your Thanksgiving dinner, it won't be a patch on the glorious feast that has been laid out at [...]

Byline: JESSE GREEN and BEN BRANTLEY BEN BRANTLEY How are your eyes this morning, Jesse? I know we both attended the same performance of Daniel Fish's exciting interpretation of Rodgers [...]

Byline: BEN BRANTLEY When did you acquire this new set of ears? You're watching a play you thought you knew better than you know your best friend, and yet suddenly [...]

Byline: JESSE GREEN, BEN BRANTLEY, ELISABETH VINCENTELLI and SCOTT HELLER Is it time to defend jukebox musicals? Or at least to stop snarking about them? They're not going away, after [...]

Byline: BEN BRANTLEY No one should have had to step into that red dress again. I'm talking about the long, strapless number that Julia Roberts wore in the 1990 film [...]