Walking on the Moon: "Message in a Bottle," reviewed.

If "writing about music is like dancing about architecture," then sending a once-prolific music writer to review a dance show is... an invitation to write about Sting, evidently. So I did. Many, many years after the Paper of Record sent me to review the Police reunion tour.

Sticks and Stones and "Webster's BItch"

Fabiolla Da Silva plays an underappreciated lexicographer.

I'm not here to, um, gripe about the fact the Paper of Record kept my repetitions of the contested word in my review of Keegan’s Webster's BItch to a mere half-dozen. Intriguing play about the protean nature of language, managerial gaslighting, and the versatility of the b-word.

The Gull-Man Cometh

Comedian Gary Gulman (Deborah Feingold)

I wrote about comedian Gary Gulman, an artist I deeply admire, for the Paper of Record.

Signature's "Private Jones," reviewed.

Johnny Link and the company of Private Jones. (Christopher Mueller)

Signature's world-premiere musical Private Jones had me pondering (again) François Truffaut's claim that a war film can't be antiwar. Reviewed for the Washington Post.

Book Review: "Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions — My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood"

My Washington Post review of prolific writer/director/producer/showrunner Ed Zwick’s name-dropping but also name-naming memoir is here.

Carl Weathers: Always the Best Man, Never the Groom

He got name-above-title on the poster, but not in the opening credits.

I had a swell time working once again with one my former Washington City Paper editors, Jon Fischer, over the weekend in his new role as WaPo’s arts editor in this piece that it only occurred to me to pitch as I was out for a run Friday evening, just a couple of hours of learning of Carl Weathers’ death.

Alt lede:

A long time ago in a century far, far away, before Liam Neeson turned AARP-eligible throat-punching into its own thriving genre, it was unusual for action movies to be released in the winter. But that was where the long-defunct Lorimar Motion Pictures chose to dump “Action Jackson” in February of 1988 — just under a year after the release of “Lethal Weapon,” seven months after “Predator,” five months before “Die Hard.” Each of those better-remembered, franchise-launching shoot-’em-ups were, like “Action Jackson,” produced (or coproduced) by Joel Silver, and each one features memorable moments from actors who were perhaps not quite famous enough even to be called character actors, but who also show up in “Action Jackson.” If you’ve a yen for hypermasculine Reagan-era bloodbaths, you’ll know their faces, if not their names: Robert Davi. Bill Duke. Mary Ellen Trainor. Ed O’Ross. The unofficial Joel Silver Players.

The exception, of course, was Jericho “Action” Jackson himself, Carl Weathers.

Larson's THX-1138: "tick... tick... BOOM!"

Brandon Uranowitz in tick… tick… BOOM! (Teresa Castracane)

With chief theatre critic Peter Marks having abdicated, the Paper of Record looks to its loyal cadre of contributors to fill the void, at least for now. My review of the Kennedy Center’s new Neil Patrick Harris-directed tick… tick… BOOM!, an expansion of the 2001 three hander musical that was already upscaled from the “rock monologue” Jonathan Larson performed as a solo piece before creating RENT, is here.

It was my editor’s suggestion to move a comment I had calling this piece Larson’s THX-1138 up into the lede. It struck me that Superbia, the never-finished dystopian future-set musical that Larson laments he’s been working on for five years in tick…, sounds quite similar to the experimental film George Lucas made before finding fame with American Graffiti and Star Wars. Equally forbidding, equally uncommercial.

"Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story" REVIEWED IN THE WASHINGTON POST

Reviewing Bono’s memoir for the Washington Post was a big deal for me. U2 was my first favorite band, and I remain, as I say in the piece, “wearily devout.” It’s been a few years (but only two albums) since the Paper of Record let me rank their albums! (I’d like a word with circa-2009 me about some of my decisions.)

I didn’t find space to point out that the only two living world leaders for whom The Fly has anything less than an admiring word are Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Or to point out that two episodes from the author’s career — though I would not call them successes — go unmentioned entirely: U2’s 9/11 memorial performance at the 2002 Super Bowl halftime show, and Bono and The Edge’s ill-fated foray (with Julie Taymor!) into musical theatre with the Broadway flop Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Though it you want to know about that exercise, I can recommend Glen Berger’s Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History.

Anyway. My review of Bono’s memoir is here. Am I boogin’ ya I doon’t mean to boog ya.