benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 13/08/2026A book that flows like a river after a spring thaw -- naturally, unstoppably, irresistibly. Few writers can match Stuart in mapping the idiosyncracies of loneliness, or the feints and evasions of being gay in a claustrophobic, hostile community. 0101
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 11/08/2026An accidental convergence of advertising and editorial on my laptop screen. 030
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 06/08/2026Our apples bring all the deers to our yard. And woodchucks and rabbits and one stumbling bear, who looks so alone and dispossessed it breaks my heart. The fauna of a crazy August. 061
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 29/07/2026No, no, this is terrible that he died so abruptly, so early. Few songwriters matched him in capturing that melancholy sweet spot where "what if?" throbbed oh so gently. Glen Hansard gave ambivalence a melody that somehow defines how we remember what eluded us, the things that got away. 1283
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 28/07/2026Oh dear. I have "Odyssey" burnout, and I haven't even seen the damn movie yet. Sometimes flooding the zone (the Times had 27 stories on it last time I counted) can drown anticipation. 020
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 10/07/2026These are my most cherished sunglasses. Yes, they are Ray-Ban Wayfarers, the everyday spectacles of millions. But unlike those of recent years, these have no brandname on the glass. I hate wearing labels, especially above my eyes. Bought new, they are now very vintage, like me. 030
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 04/07/2026For the record, I counted more than 30 stories within the last week in the New York Times on the wedding of a pop star and a football star. I feel sure there are more to come. 020
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 04/07/2026Farewell to Bobbi Queen, a fashion editor and fashion plate without peer, whom I met at Women's Wear Daily and who continued to illuminate my life with the startling sparkle of fireworks. Her style was as incisive and instinctive as her wit, her curiosity as big as the world. 010
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 01/07/2026And suddenly, we're stuck in the opening number of Act Two in "Sunday in the Park with George." 160
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 28/06/2026Happy 100th birthday to that laughing pioneer Mel Brooks, who changed the course not just of screen comedy but of the Broadway musical. His taboo-busting stage version of "The Producers" parodied with passion, tickling and hugging a classic genre into a state of giggly rapture. 060
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 18/06/2026Few performances capture the anesthetizing, quiet confusion of deep grief as artfully as Quincy Tyler Bernstine does in Bubba Weiler's "Well, I'll Let You Go." This soft-spoken drama, at Studio Seaview, sucker punches you, hard, when you don't expect it. Rather like grief itself. 063
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 08/06/2026I wake up to discover that two of my favorite artists have won Tonys. Lesley Manville and Laurie Metcalf. Each -- Manville in "Oedipus" and Metcalfe in "Death of a Salesman" -- rendered moments of angry, incandescent pain that rank among the truest, most searing acting I've seen. Brava and brava! 180
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 07/06/2026While I wish everyone involved many broken legs, I will not be watching the Tony Awards this year. Once they leave CBS, I will return to my usual cheering section. 070
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 01/06/2026This very faded picture was taken around the time I realized that I was who I was, as it were. Though I knew I would be keeping a secret for a while, I didn't feel cursed. I felt confident, for the first time, that I was going to be just fine. So it has proved. Happy Pride Month. 080
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 31/05/2026This weekend, I learned the word for a condition I have lived with since childhood, and it is good to at last have a name for it. That's abibliophobia, the fear of being without a book. 0120
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 28/05/2026This is essential for anyone interested in the state of theater and of human identity in the age of perpetually mutating self. Kip Williams rediscovers Genet's "The Maids," at St. Ann's Warehouse, as a prophecy for an era when existential uncertainty becomes public performance. 072
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 26/05/2026I admit I'm kind of excited about this. I love this play, an expertly tailored, old-fashioned family drama with a new-fashioned heart. And Dreyfus in a part she can make a meal of? And Ed Harris? And Janney and Rabe? www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/t...nytimes.comJulia Louis-Dreyfus to Make Broadway Debut in ‘Other Desert Cities’ 071
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 24/05/2026A book that was made for a rainy Memorial Day weekend. 130
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 12/05/2026Farewell to Rex Reed, one of the rare critics to acquire something like movie star status. (In fact, he was the man who became Raquel Welch in "Myra Breckenridge.") He was also the first writer to attack me in print. I was thrilled. It felt more like a baptism than a slap. 0120
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 09/05/2026At LaGuardia departure lounge, where I encounter a frequent flyer who seems destined to take off long before I do. 030
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 04/05/2026I am so pleased that this won the Pulitzer. Bess Wohl's "Liberation" hit me with a direct emotional impact I hadn't experienced since the "The Normal Heart" revival. It felt immediate and personal, and I saw my mother's life and my sister's life with a vividness that stung. 0111
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 04/05/2026And today, the rose-breasted grosbeak arrived. 050
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 01/05/2026When tons of wicked little thoughts merrily appear.... 040
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 01/05/2026It's not just the fashion industry that has changed since the original "The Devil Wears Prada." Could anyone twenty years ago have imagined Meryl Streep participating in the kind of exhausting, storm-the-beaches, flood-the-zone press campaign that has attended the sequel? 040
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 29/04/2026Every morning, I go to the window and, everywhere I look, the world has gotten greener -- I mean, deep, explosive, all-pervasive green. Hey, we have arrived in the land of Oz! 060
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 28/04/2026Taylor Swift breaking down the craft of songwriting -- the origins, process and aftermath -- in the New York Times is my favorite interview in ages. Bonus: It's a guide on how to stay sane while famous. Lucid, funny, self-aware and so artful and illuminating in its use of detail. 151
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 15/04/2026It's the knife-like voice of the dead girl, sung by Vilma Jaa, that I can't get out of my head this morning. That and the subliminal chorus that floats that seems to have its roots in your own memory. Simon Stone's Met production of Kaija Saariaho's "Innocence" is a night at the opera like no other. 040
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 12/04/2026I had a swell weekend of revitalized (and revitalizing) theater - on Broadway, of all places: "Death of a Salesman," "Becky Shaw" and "Cats: The Jellicle Ball." Each, in its way, testifying to how theater can reframe the world. Like Orban's defeat, a reason to hope this spring. 0221
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 12/04/2026Something I never thought I'd say: I cried at "Cats." A musical that celebrates rebirth has found its ideal form in "Cats: The Jellicle Ball" on Broadway, which presents ballroom culture as the most joyous, transformative church you could ever belong to. 2231
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 11/04/2026The expert Broadway reincarnation of "Becky Shaw," Gina Gionfriddo's corrosive comedy about the damage that damaged people do, is pretty close to perfect. It's the tart tonic I hadn't even realized I was thirsty for - the kind that goes down easily but with a sting that both tickles and alarms. 0101
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 05/04/2026It's the BIRTHday of BETte DAvis, who brought a new kind of nerviness to American screens. I interviewed her in my first job in New York, for W. She really did talk in emphatic, parsed, capital-letter syllables. She told me that in terms of female screen types, she was a BROAD. 0140
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 05/04/2026The first daffodils to emerge here out of this creeping spring -- next to a stone wall, under a thicket of thorns. 0432
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 04/04/2026The original Broadway Grizabella hits the ballroom to check out her latest successor and likes what she sees. A lovely generation-bridging piece by Betty Buckley. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/04/o...nytimes.comOpinion | ‘Cats’ Were Always Meant to Vogue 031
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 01/04/2026The times have made April Fools' gags superfluous and close to impossible. Read the headlines today, and so many of them seem ripe for an "April Fools!'" postscript. If only the last ten years of American history could be erased with a celestial voice booming, "Just kidding!" 083
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 31/03/2026The first day this year that had that softness in the air that for me is real, pure spring. You're startled by its gentleness. And suddenly you feel vaguely hopeful. 0120
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 23/03/2026Farewell to Valerie Perrine, who had a wry erotic forthrightness that made sex a healthy matter of fact. She won an Oscar nomination as Lenny Bruce's wife, but she first won my heart as Marge from "The Last American Hero," when she told Jeff Bridges, "I'm not nice, I'm perfect." 082
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 13/03/2026Spent last night soaking up international angst a la Abba, having finally caught "Chess." Was dazzled by Nicholas Christopher, who emerges here as a true Broadway star. His rich baritone and charismatic centeredness transmute propulsive pop into something close to grand opera. 2120
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 12/03/2026It is the birthday of the possessor of this amused, defiant, penetrating gaze, which was applied in the creation of some of the wittiest, wisest, most coruscating theater ever written. Raise a glass of rubbing alcohol (Martha: "never mix, never worry") to Edward Albee. 030
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 12/03/2026It is, impossibly, the 80th birthday of Liza Minnelli, the star of one of the greatest movie musicals ("Cabaret") and the most sizzling musical television revue ever ("Liza with a Z"). Celebrate by putting on a bowler, cocking a hip and throwing your leg over the back of a chair. 1174
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 10/03/2026A gentle day closes as a prelude to spring. 060
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 08/03/2026And lo and behold, as the clocks moved forward, heralding a new season, the snows that had lain on the land for many weeks dissolved into a mist that enfolded all the countryside. And there was celebration amid the mud. 0100
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 05/03/2026n the New York Times, I ponder Jonathan Groff's evolution into a bona fide matinee idol. A very rare example of a nice guy finishing first. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/t...nytimes.comHow Jonathan Groff Became Broadway’s Leading Man 0120
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 03/03/2026At the risk of being redundant.... 060
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 25/02/2026This evening: a spectral possum in the snow. 050
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 22/02/2026This picture taken at twilight -- just before the next storm -- to commemorate a brief period in which there were visible patches of grass near the roots of trees. 040
benjbrantley.bsky.social @benjbrantley.bsky.social · 20/02/2026Here it comes again. The view through my windshield this morning. 080
