A Contradictory Tapestry: "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical," reviewed.

Natalie Weiss as Carole King in Olney’s Beautiful. (Teresa Castracane)

The paradox of building a musical around the fact that Carole King was much more comfortable writing songs than performing them publicly for the first dozen-plus years of her remarkable career is that it requires you to find a Broadway belter who can sell the idea that she's shy.

For me, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical never figures out how to square that circle, but it's clear from what a monster the show has been that audiences do not agree! And those ancient-but-ageless King/Goffin hits, like those ancient-but-ageless Weil/Mann hits, are undeniable. My review of Olney’s new production is in the Paper of Record.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "A Quiet Place: Day One"

Lupita Nyong'o is trying to die on her own terms in Michael Sarnoski’s A Quiet Place prequel.

Shhhh! I’m on PCHH today dissecting PIG auteur Michael Sarnoski’s A Quiet Place: Day One with Aisha Harris and Kirsten Meinzer. Aisha mentioned Thomasina, with no prompting from me, so you can also go find our A Degree Absolute! episode on that 60s Disney curiosity here.

Two-Lane Blacktop: "The Bikeriders," reviewed.

Tom Hardy and Austin Butler as a couple of Vandals. (Kyle Kaplan/Focus Features)

“Comer’s Chicagoland accent is dead-solid perfect. Hardy, as is his wont, has affected a vocal timbre native to no place on this planet; Butler is still playing Elvis.”

My Washington City Paper review of Jeff Nichols’ great-looking-if-somewhat-underfed latest, The Bikeriders, is here.

Best in Show: Round House's "Topdog / Underdog," reviewed.

Ro Boddie and Yao Dogbe as Lincoln and Booth. (Margot Schulman)

My review of Round House’s Topdog/Underdog, a sublime production of the 2001 psychodrama that made Suzan-Lori Parks the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama, is up at the Washington Post. A couple of months back I had a day where I went directly from interviewing Ms. Parks for this Smithsonian piece into a Pop Culture Happy Hour recording session wherein we discussed Doug Liman’s Jake Gyllenhaal-headlined remake of Road House. Like Dalton, Road House ‘89’s inexplicably famous “cooler,” I contain multitudes.

Burning Chrome: "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," reviewed.

Drive-By Truckers: Tom Burke and Anya Taylor-Joy in Furiosa. (Warner Bros. / Jasin Boland)

Picaresque in form and Biblical in its savagery, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the first entry in the five-film Max-iad that unfolds over years instead of days. A revenge flick about the futility of revenge, it sticks the landing, and then binds itself too tightly to that movie we all loved 9 (!) years ago in its closing moments. But it’s still a marvel.

My full Washington City Paper review is here.

America's Ass: "There Was Nothing You Could Do," reviewed.

The about-to-turn-40-year-old blockbuster album that came wrapped in an Annie Leibovitz closeup of the Boss-terior isn’t any true Bruuuuuuuce fan’s favorite, but it was a cultural landmark all the same. I reviewed Steven Hyden’s new Born in the U.S.A. reflection There Was Nothing You Could Do for the Paper of Record.

Don't Call It a Two-Hander: "Mexodus," reviewed.

Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson, the cocreators and performers of Mexodus. (Chris Banks)

My Washington Post review of Mexodus, a brilliantly performed but still somewhat underwritten musical about the line of the Underground Railroad that ran south into Mexico, is here.

"Dark Matter," recapped.

Joel Edgerton plays a physicist menaced by an alternate version of himself.

Dark Matter, the new multiversal thriller on Apple TV+, is adapted by showrunner Blake Crouch from his own 2016 novel, but it was the show’s superficial similarities to The Prisoner that piqued my interest. I detailed the ways that seminal British spy-fi series influenced this new American one in the first of my Dark Matter recaps for Vulture.