When journalist Patrick Bringley – who, at the age of 22, landed a prestigious full-time job at The New Yorker magazine – lost his 27-year-old brother Tom to cancer, he needed a place to heal, to escape from the daily grind, demands, and pressures of the office, and to reflect on life. He found refuge at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where, in 2008, he took a job as a museum guard. He later wrote of his epiphany there in a best-selling memoir, which he adapted into a debut solo performance of the same name, All the Beauty in the World, first produced at South Carolina’s Charleston Literary Festival in 2024, and now playing an already extended limited engagement at the DR2 Theatre.
Directed by Dominic Dromgoole, the touching first-person direct-address autobiographical presentation is more in the format of an inspirational TED talk than a fully enacted narrative play, in which Bringley, wearing the uniform of a dark blue suit studded with Met pins on its lapels, takes us through the ten years of his personal experiences with the historic art, his encounters with the museum visitors, and his relationships with the other guards, and philosophizes about how it all shaped his understanding of beauty, time, loss, and life, led him to see the world differently, and changed him.
In his soft and steady voice, Bringley interweaves the story of his brother’s illness and death with observations about his work at the museum (mostly silent and standing), the art that captivated him, immersed him in the themes, periods, and cultures represented, and provided him a window to the world, and the diversity of people with whom he connected. Dromgoole has him move around the stage, gesture, and point at projections of the masterpieces and telling phrases on three suspended screens (projection design by Austin Switser), sit, stand, and lie down on the museum’s benches (set by Dromgoole), and recount the memorable words of his family, colleagues, and strangers who approached him at the Met, as the ringing of bells (sound by Caleb Garner) and changes in lighting (by Abigail Hoke-Brady) signal the different segments of his thoughts and memories, waxing poetic about what it meant to him, and expressing how he came to recognize and to appreciate the world and all its beauty.
Along with his affecting monologue, there are bits of audience interaction and voluntary participation that bring humor to the show, as do some of his descriptions (e.g., of standing for twelve hours a day on a hard floor and grabbing a few winks of sleep, using his clip-on tie to cover his eyes), and silly questions he was asked by museum visitors (no spoilers here, but I guarantee they’ll have you laughing). And there are some art historical analyses of the artists, their materials and techniques, and their works, which he saw and read about in his assigned posts (in as many as three different galleries a day), from an ancient Greek kouros statue to a portrait by Titian, the paintings of Vermeer, an unfinished work by Dürer that is kept “backstage” at the Met, The Jewish Bride by Rembrandt, which Van Gogh said he would give ten years of his life to sit in front of, and his examination of the figures in Brueghel’s The Harvesters, as well as a moving comparison between Giotto’s Lamentation of ca. 1305, depicting the Virgin Mary holding and grieving over the body of Christ, and his own mother’s goodbye to her dying son Tom in his hospital bed.
When, following the death of his brother, Bringley married, and the couple had a son, and then a daughter, the vibrant level of energy in his home life and consuming familial commitment contrasted sharply with the peace, serenity, and solitude he found at the museum. It was time to leave; he had learned to appreciate the beauty and camaraderie that characterized his decade there and gradually emerged to begin life anew as a husband and father, writer, speaker, and artist of the stage.
All the Beauty in the World is a revelatory journey through grief and healing, and a tribute to the power of art to engage us, to teach us, and to transform us. And those qualities are not limited to the visual arts but also define the literary and performing arts, as seen in Bringley’s book (which has been translated into many languages and is acclaimed around the globe) and in this intimate production at the DR2 Theatre. As a theater journalist and reviewer, with a PhD in Art History and an earlier career as a professor, curator, and gallery director, it’s the perfect synthesis of my specialties and passions, but its theme and message speak to everyone, everywhere, about the human experience.
Running Time: Approximately 80 minutes, without intermission.
All the Beauty in the World plays through Sunday, May 25, 2025, at the DR2 Theatre, 103 East 15th Street, NYC. For tickets (priced at $61-109, including fees), go online.
