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.

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.

Stuck Like a Pig: "Fat Ham," reviewed.

Greg Alverez Reid and Marquis D. Gibson as a kingslayer and his nephew in Fat Ham. (Margot Schulman)

My City Paper review of Studio’s production of Fat Ham, James Ijames’ Pulitzer-winning Hamlet rewrite, is here. You can also read my profile of the playwright from last May.

A Union of Contradictions: "Confederates," reviewed.

Caro Dubberly and Nikkole Salter in Confederates. (Chris Banks)

My Washington City Paper review of Mosaic Theater Company’s strong production of Dominique Morisseau’s play Confederates is here.

The Roach Eaters: "The Pitchfork Disney" returns to DC after 27 years.

Em Whitworth and Jack Rento rehearse The Pitchfork Disney. (Photo: Caroline Johnson)

Here’s a feature I did for the City Paper about a scrappy young paor of actors, Em Whitworth and Jack Rento, putting up their own DIY production of Philip Ridley’s The PItchfork Disney, a gnarly play that had its U.S. premiere at Woolly Mammoth back in 1995 and hasn’t been seen in Our Nation’s Capitol since.