Ben Brantley's Cruelest Theatre Reviews

High Fidelity: "A new musical is said to have opened last night on Broadway. I mean, I saw it. Or I think I did. It's called, uh, wait a minute, it'll come to me. Got it! "High Fidelity." And if I close my eyes and concentrate really hard, I just might be able to describe a show that erases itself from your memory even as you watch it."

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/theater/reviews/08fide.html?scp=1&sq=High%20Fidelity%20Ben%20Brantley&st=cse


The Little Mermaid: "Loved the shoes. Loathed the show.

O.K., I exaggerate. I didn't like the shoes all that much."

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/theater/reviews/11merm.html


The Times They Are A-Changin': "If you happen to be among the masochists who make a habit of attending the entertainments called jukebox musicals, in which pop hits are beaten up by singing robots, you may think you'™ve seen it all: the neutering of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys in "œGood Vibrations" the canonizing (and shrinking) of John Lennon as a misunderstood angel-child in "Lennon," and the forcible transformation of Johnny Cash from Man in Black to Sunshine Cowboy in "Ring of Fire."

But even these spectacles of torture with a smile, frightening though they may be, are but bagatelles compared with the systematic steamrolling of Bob Dylan that occurs in "œThe Times They Are A-Changin'" which opened last night at the Brooks Atkinson Theater."

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/theater/reviews/27chan.html?scp=1&sq=The%20Times%20They%20Are%20A-Changin%27%20Ben%20Brantley&st=cse

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Updated On: 7/9/09 at 03:35 PM

I laughed out loud at this quote from the Little Mermaid review:


"Directed by Francesca Zambello, this "Little Mermaid" burdens its performers with ungainly guess-what-I-am costumes (by Tatiana Noginova) and a distracting set (by George Tsypin) awash in pastels gone sour and unidentifiable giant tchotchkes that suggest a Luau Lounge whipped up by an acid-head heiress in the 1960s."

Updated On: 7/9/09 at 03:41 PM

My favorite was for Good Vibrations:

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/02/03/theater/reviews/03good.html?scp=1&sq=brantley%20reviews%20good%20vibrations&st=cse

"Even those who believe everything on this planet is here for a purpose may at first have trouble justifying the existence of 'Good Vibrations,' the singing headache that opened last night at the Eugene O'Neill Theater.

"But audience members strong enough to sit through this rickety jukebox of a show, which manages to purge all catchiness from the surpassingly catchy hits of the Beach Boys, will discover that the production does have a reason to be, and a noble one: 'Good Vibrations' sacrifices itself, night after night and with considerable anguish, to make all other musicals on Broadway look good."

"A Tale of Two Cities
"This stolid poperetta, which features book, music and lyrics by Jill Santoriello and is directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle, is one of those unfortunate shows that are neither witty in themselves nor able to inspire wit in others. To say it could have been worse - i.e., gloriously, hilariously bad - is not a cause for rejoicing." "

Remember when we in junior high school, and we called it A SALE OF TWO TITTIES. And we thought we were so clever.

Oh yeah, only to be followed by the next book we had to read, SILLYASS MARNER.

I thought it was Good Vibrations where Brantley or Isherwood declined to name members of the cast, but opined the only people in the audience would be producers and talent scouts for other shows as the cast would be available real soon. But, that line isn't in this review (although he does decline to name the actors). I'm pretty sure it was around the same time.

Reading a few of these reviews, it dawns on you what a worthless critic Brantley is. Compare these "worst" reviews to Roger Ebert's wildly hilarious and yet somehow always fair pans. Brantley isn't funny or clever or original in his pans, and he rarely has anything remotely insightful to say in his positive reviews. He's like the Times' film critic, A.O. Scott...he simply brings nothing new to the table, contributes nothing to the discussion.

You wanna read CRUEL reviews? Read some of John Simon's, especially from the 80's and 90's. That guy is an asshole!

I LOVE John Simon's reviews!

I think because he didn't have the word count that Brantly is so generously given, he had to be even more direct and cutting in his pieces- which makes them all the better!

Favorites from Simon:

On "Dracula:"

"But that music! It is like a long, uniform sausage made of sawdust, cut into uneven slices (rhythm) with singing sometimes yelled, sometimes whispered (variety). It is not so much composed as ground out, enough to give monotony a bad name and make one yearn for the melody of an interrupting cell phone."

On "Movin' Out:"

"Twyla Tharp's second try at a Broadway musical is worse than her first, Singin' in the Rain, in 1985. It would, of course, help if Movin' Out were set to music rather than to Billy Joel, but we are used to street noise and can tune out this tuneless stuff without too much effort. "

On "The Noise of Time:" (Personal favorite)

Such is the case of the Theatre de Complicite's The Noise of Time, a piece of sheer pretension, ineptitude, and emptiness that elicited deafening audience ovations and two glowing features plus two rave reviews from our newspaper of record. It confirms my belief that were you to put a pair of copulating dogs on the stage, you, too, could, with the inevitable hype, pass for as great an artist as the charlatan, lunatic, or imbecile Simon McBurney, guiding light (or chief obfuscator) of Complicite, who conceived and staged this piece. It purports to shed light on the life of Dmitri Shostakovich, on how we hear music, on the place of the artist in history, on the somber meanings of the composer's fifteenth and last quartet, and, for all I know, on the price of eggs."

And lastly, on "Wicked:"

"Never mind that, what of a score by Stephen Schwartz, who has clearly lost it? Only one song, ?Wonderful,? has a memorable tune, and even that rather trite. The lyrics might as well be spoken rather than sung, except that then we could make out the words, which have at best intermittent sparkle. So maybe the aggressive orchestra is performing a charitable act, and what we are supposed to focus on is really the décor by Eugene Lee, and the somewhat hit-or-miss costumes of Susan Hilferty. "

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Um, he liked the song "Wonderful" from Wicked? He just lost all of his cool points.

Um, he liked the song "Wonderful" from Wicked? He just lost all of his cool points.

He didn't say he liked it. He said it was memorable, but trite.

Updated On: 7/9/09 at 06:56 PM

Is it cruel if it was deserved?

I remember what Hitler did. Doesn't mean I like what he did. It's still MEMORABLE.

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