Remembering Scotty Bennett

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TheaterScene.net has learned of the passing of Scotty Bennett, who contributed 140 reviews to our site between November 2022 and September 2025, during the crucial post-pandemic return of live theater in New York.

Scotty was a steady presence in our pages during a period when theaters were rebuilding audiences and momentum. His reviews combined practical theatrical knowledge with a clear-eyed evaluation of how productions worked in performance.

From his December 2022 review of LaRace, he wrote:

“The cast does a good job of dealing with some of the complicated aspects of a story about diversity and gender, but there are some bumps in their presentations. There are moments when some dialog is overwrought, and some of the interpersonal interactions are unclear and don’t quite ring true, but these are not significant issues to the overall thrust of the play.”

Reviewing Who Murdered Love? in February 2023, he assessed the musical elements directly:

“The musical numbers, with music by Richard West and lyrics by Lissa Moira, are a mixed bag, with some working and others not so much.”

In April 2023’s Bringer of Doom, his attention to performance nuance was evident:

“Lotte, the aggrieved daughter and the architect of the revenge scheme, is beautifully played by Bimini Wright with a sweetness that conceals the anger driving her effort to destroy her mother.”

And in Push Party (June 2024), even after noting tonal concerns, he concluded:

“Still, in the end, the show delivers a solid theatrical experience.”

Scotty brought to his criticism a lifetime in and around theater — as an actor, director, stagehand, lighting and sound designer, set builder, radio disc jockey, and television studio operator. That background informed writing that was attentive to craft and grounded in the lived experience of performance.

In addition to his work with TheaterScene.net, Scotty served as treasurer of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association and was a member of the International Association of Theatre Critics.

A Personal Reflection from Victor Gluck, Editor-in-Chief, TheaterScene.net

I encountered Scotty Bennett on Friday, November 11, 2022 at the Annual American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association New York Mini-Meeting where he was acting as host and he mentioned looking for a new venue for writing theater reviews. I promptly invited him to write for TheaterScene.net. He immediately came on board and began submitting one review a week, eventually upping this to two. He eventually began writing for two other theater publications including Alan Smason’s Theatercriticism.com: Reviews of Stage Shows Across the United States.

He never turned down a review request except when he had already accepted the assignment from another publication or if he was a close friend of someone associated with the production. We attended the theater together twice as colleagues (Ode to the Wasp Woman at the Actors Temple Theatre on Nov. 6, 2023 and The United States vs. Ulysses at the Irish Arts Center on May 1, 2025). At dinner both times, Scotty proved he was not only knowledgeable about the theater and other fields, he had seen and remembered everything. He also was a great raconteur with many stories from his varied life and career to tell.

Although he tended to hand in his previous reviews just as he was about to attend his next one, his copy was always clean and required little editing. I knew he was heavily involved with editing the papers of esteemed theater critic and educator Glenn Loney with whom he had traveled to European theater festivals for many summers prior to Loney’s passing in 2018. Scotty called me late in September 2025 to say that he was too ill to attend his next assignment but expected to be on his feet soon. His last review for Theaterscene.net was of an avant-garde production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard published on September 30, 2025. He will be sorely missed by TheaterScene.net, ATCA and the theater community.

Victor Gluck, February 16, 2026

We are grateful for Scotty’s 140 contributions during an important period in the city’s theatrical recovery. We extend our condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues.

Jack Quinn

Publisher