I Wrote a Thing (And I Read Some Others)

On Caryl Churchill, JD Vance, sobriety, sofas, and such like

“Caryl Churchill, among the fiercest and boldest of Britain’s modern playwrights, goes nearly as hard about identity in A Number as she’s gone in other plays about sociopolitical upheavals (Mad Forest and Far Away) and sexual politics (Cloud 9 and most famously Top Girls) — big-swing, big-think exercises all of them, none as interested in providing answers as suggesting the endless complications involved in opening the questions.”

Or at least so says some wise-ass in The Washington Post this week:

I come not to boast, but to whine. Because writing short about a play like A Number is way more work than it ought to be.¹ Not that I haven’t had practice: If you know me well, you know I worked as a writer and editor at USA Today for half a decade, writing both punny headlines and tight-bright paragraphs for the Lifeline column, not to mention the occasional tech and theater story. An 8-inch² theater review was the norm for us, and my colleague David Patrick Stearns taught me all kinds of less…