"Yes, it is really that good." or “Loved the shoes. Loathed the show. O.K., I exaggerate. I didn’t like the shoes all that much.”
These are the words of Ben Brantley, the former chief theater critic for the New York Times.
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| Ben Brantley of the NYT |
Ben Brantley was born in Durham, NC on October 26, 1954 and grew up in Winston-Salem. In my book, that basically makes him a local NC celebrity!
He attended Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania where he received his B.A. in English. Brantley went on to have many different writing related jobs before going to work for the New York Times.
He worked for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Elle magazines. For Elle, he reviewed films. He was also a freelance writer and the European editor, publisher and Paris bureau chief for Women's Wear Daily.
He also interned at the Winston-Salem Sentinel and was an editorial assistant at The Village Voice. He did all of this before his biggest career move to join the New York Times in 1993.
As someone who is a journalist but also an actress, I have a great admiration for Brantley. It is not easy to be a critic, never the less one for an art as subjective as theater. For the 27 years he worked at the Times, he had the power to give a show public praise sending ticket sales soaring or criticize it so badly that it was doomed before previews were even over.
Being in a position where your job is to criticize people is no easy task, and I hope that I can learn from his style and incorporate it into my pieces in opinion writing class.
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Ben Brantley shares with the world his opinions on
theater. |
Above all, I admire Brantley's honesty within his work. In each piece he writes, he is authentic and shares his true feelings about the show he is reviewing.
The two quotes I used earlier are from reviews Brantley did on two extremely popular broadway shows. The first quote, which included a praise, was from a review of
Hamilton. The second quote saying he "loathed" the show was about
The Little Mermaid. Both shows were beloved and have had strong broadway runs.
Brantley, however, does not care. He shares how he genuinely feels about the show regardless of what the public thinks. I hope that as a journalist I can practice tuning out the public and sharing my own genuine opinion.
At least Brantley didn't earn the nickname "Butcher of Broadway" like his predecessor at the Times! He has a more gentle style, even when he has negative opinions of a show. That's a good model for you!
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