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.

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.

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.

"Macbeth," in Fiennes form

Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma as M and Lady M. (Marc Brenner)

Hype Check: There’s nothing about the Ralph Fiennes-anchored, “found” spaces Macbeth that couldn’t have happened on on the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s home court on F St. NW but it’s still a great opportunity to see 007’s boss M (!) offer a more comic take on a part 007 played only two years ago, as I aver in yer now-paperless Washington City Paper.

I have no memory of seeing this prior, contemporary-warzone-set STC Macbeth — 2017 was about 25 years ago — but evidently I didn’t like it.

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.