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Ben Brantley
@BenjBrantley
reader and theatergoer
nyc
Joined April 2012
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  • user avatar
    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.
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    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.
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    Ben Brantley
    @BenjBrantley
    Nov 26, 2021
    Goodbye, Stephen Sondheim. Truly without peer. The vacuum left is incomparable; so is the legacy.
  • user avatar
    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
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    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.
  • user avatar
    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
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    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."
  • user avatar
    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
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    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
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    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.
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    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
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    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
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    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
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    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.