Based on the New York Times bestselling memoir, the fascinating, moving story of a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A limited Off-Broadway engagement at the DR2 Theater on Union Square, March 27th through May 18th, 2025.
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Directed by Dominic Dromgoole, former artistic director of the Globe Theatre in London, and performed by Patrick Bringley.
Read a feature about the play in the New York Times.
Watch a short announcement video.
For media inquiries, contact Scott Klein.
While looking for somewhere to contemplate his life and heal from his brother’s death, Patrick quits his high-profile journalism career at The New Yorker and seeks refuge in the most beautiful place he can think of: the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Through his job as a museum guard, Patrick starts his life anew, all while falling under the spell of the place and the people he meets there. As his connection to the art around him grows, so does Patrick, until he gradually reemerges... transformed by all the beauty.
All The Beauty In The World features scenic design by Dominic Dromgoole, lighting design by Abigail Hoke-Brady (A Guide for the Homesick; The Last Supper), projection design by Austin Switser (Paradise Interrupted; Emilie), and sound design by Caleb Garner (The 39 Steps; Cabaret).
“As a museum guard, I stood quietly in corners and never dreamed I would take center stage,” said Patrick Bringley. “I'm touched by the public's embrace of my memoir — a story about art, an extraordinary workplace, and the fellowship I discovered in the wake of a loss. Performing it as a one-man play is fitting, given a guard’s solitary role. But what excites me most is getting to share moments of epiphany with an audience. After all, a theater, no less than a gallery, is a place for art.”
All The Beauty In The World plays DR2 Theatre (103 E. 15th Street). Performances are Tuesday at 7PM, Wednesday at 2PM and 7PM, Thursday at 7PM, Friday at 8PM, Saturday at 2PM and 8PM, and Sunday at 3PM.
Tickets begin at $45.00 and are available via telecharge.
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Patrick Bringley (playwright/actor) Patrick Bringley makes his theatrical debut after spending a decade as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — an experience he chronicles in his bestselling memoir, All the Beauty in the World. After ten hardcover printings, the book was published in paperback and spent nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It was named one of the best books of the year by the New York Public Library, the Financial Times, Audible, the New York Post, the Sunday Times (London), and others, and has resonated globally, with translated editions from Italy to Ukraine to South Korea, where it's a #1 national bestseller. Patrick has spoken at major cultural institutions across America and internationally. Venues include: the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the New York Public Library, the Peabody-Essex Museum, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Memorial Art Gallery, the Chrysler Museum of Art, the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai, and others. Before working at the Met, Patrick worked in the editorial events office at the New Yorker. His connection to theater began in childhood, watching his mother, Maureen Gallagher, perform on Chicago stages. Her portrayal of Emily Dickinson in the one-woman play The Belle of Amherst, earned her a Joseph Jefferson award and Patrick is honored to be carrying on the tradition and dedicates his performance to her. He lives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, with his wife and two children.
Dominic Dromgoole (director) is a director and multi-faceted artistic hyphenate of extraordinary accomplishment. Based in the U.K, he works globally. He was Artistic Director of the Globe Theatre in London from 2006-2016, and more recently the artistic director of Classic Spring Theatre Company, and director of Open Palm Film Company. He was previously artistic director of the Oxford Stage Company (1998-2005) and the Bush Theatre (1990-96). Dominic has directed over 100 shows and produced 400, which have been seen, thanks to his unprecedented Hamlet Globe-to-Globe tour, in nearly 200 different countries. Previous shows in New York include productions of Twelfth Night, Richard III and Farinelli and the King, all at the Belasco Theater on Broadway; Love’s Labour’s Lost at the Schimmel Center and Hamlet at the United Nations, which he directed. Most recently he has been directing in London at the Menier Chocolate Factory; in China, where his production of Frankenstein has been playing for three years, and in Spain where his El Perro Del Hortelano has played for four years. Last year he branched out into Opera with Brecht/Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins with the London Philharmonic. At the Globe, he led the creation of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, and an ambitious international outreach scheme. This culminated in the Globe-to-Globe Festival in 2012, and to touring Hamlet to every country in the world between 2014 and 2016. Dominic drove the creation of the Globe Player in 2012, an online platform to market and sell films of Globe productions, the first of its kind for an arts organization. Twenty three of the Shakespeare productions were filmed, and have been seen across the world. In 2015-16, Dominic produced 37 short films, one for each Shakespeare play, enacting scenes from each play in its originally imagined setting. These included: Simon Russell Beale in a short film of Timon of Athens; Dominic West in a short film of Coriolanus; and Toby Jones in a short film about Falstaff. Since 2016, he has produced six feature films with his company Open Palm, directing one, Making Noise Quietly. He is developing two feature films with the producer David Parfitt. Dominic is the author of The Full Room: An A-Z of Contemporary Playwriting (Methuen 2000), Will and Me: How Shakespeare Took Over My Life (Penguin 2006), which won the inaugural Sheridan Morley award; Hamlet, Globe to Globe (Canongate in 2017); and the recently published Astonish Me for Profile. He is at present writing his fifth book for Faber on the history of the proscenium theatre for publication in 2026.