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.

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.

Don't Fly With Me: Arena's "Catch Me If You Can," reviewed.

Hayley Podschun, Alexandra Frohlinger, Christian Thompson and Rhett Guter in Arena’s revised-but-still unsatisfying Catch Me If You Can. (Margot Schulman)

Catch Me If You Can, the Hairspray songwriters’ attempt to musicalize Steven Spielberg’s beloved 2002 film, didn’t take off on Broadway 11 years ago. The revised version now at Arena Stage doesn’t work, either. For the Washington City Paper.

"A Strange Loop" at Woolly Mammoth, reviewed.

Jaquel Spivey (in red) is the member of the Strange Loop cast new to Woolly’s production. (Marc J. Franklin)

“A Strange Loop” would be a pretty good way to describe the sensation of rather suddenly attending and writing about theatre again. My Washington City Paper review of Woolly Mammoth’s terrific production of Michael R. Jackson’s self-aware and semiautobiographical musical A Strange Loop—which won a Pulitzer in 2019—is here.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's me on The Original Cast!

It all started when I bought my buddy, Superman biographer Glen Weldon, a copy of this LP in Asbury Park, New Jersey for $20.

Funny thing: Patrick Flynn lives in Bethesda, Maryland, a short public-transit trip across the northwest border of Washington, DC, where I live. We know many of the same people because we're both involved in theatre; him as a playwright, me as a critic. And yet our paths never crossed until he heard me on James Bonding last fall, which Matt Gourley and Matt Mira record weekly at Gourley's beautiful home in Pasadena, all the way on the other side of country.

Anyway, Patrick kindly invited me to appear on The Original Cast, his fine podcast celebrating Broadway cast albums, to discuss a musical of my choice. I picked the 1966 curiosity It's a Bird! It's a Plane!, which I'd never heard of but never heard until I picked up a secondhand LP of it as a gift for my buddy Glen Weldon a couple years back. Glen wrote the book on Superman, or at least a book on Superman. It's certainly the book on Superman I can most enthusiastically recommend.

Here's the discussion Patrick and I had, which does not confine itself to the Man of Steel's brief life as a Broadway star, for reasons that shall become clear. This was recorded in late April.

Unsinkable? Unthinkable! Signature Theatre's all-singing, all-dancing Titanic, reviewed.

Christopher Bloch, Nick Lehan, Lawrence Redmond, and Bobby Smith in Signature's Titanic. (Christopher Mueller) 

Signature Theatre has revived Titanic, a multi-Tony Award-winning musical from 1997 that almost no one remembers. Apparently it was upstaged by some movie? My Washington City Paper review is here.

Gay for Play: La Cage Aux Folles, reviewed.

Brent Barrett surrounded by Les Cagelles (Signature).

My review of Signature Theatre's robust revival of Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein's beloved Reagan-era musical farce La Cage Aux Folles is in this week's Washington City Paper. I like the show, but I don't like my review as much as the one I wrote of the Goodspeed Opera House's production about a year ago, as part of my coursework for the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center's National Critics Institute. Which is odd, because I remember thinking I was producing mostly unpublishable copy while I was there. I've never been a fast writer. Most days we had copy due at 8:30 or 9 a.m. about the show we'd seen the night before. Anyway, the Critic Class of 2016 starts their two-week term on Saturday. Good luck, you guys. I envy you, sort of — just not your early-a.m. deadlines or your accommodations or your on-campus meals. 

Actually, the coffee was pretty decent. I drank a lot of it, at any rate.

A Silver Spoonful of Sugar: The Lion, reviewed.

Benjamin Scheuer, composer & performer of the solo musical The Lion (Matthew Murphy).

I struggled with my Washington City Paper review of The Lion, a strong, brief one-man musical play by the singer-songwriter Benjamin Scheuer. This was a case where learning about the circumstances of the show's creation—as one is wont to do when writing about art—made me like it less in hindsight than I did the moment the performance ended. Is that fair? I'm still not sure. You can read my attempt to work through my consternation while still giving the artist his due here.