The boards: man in tights.(The Talk of the Town)(journalist and author Andrew Sullivan)

Back in December, Andrew Sullivan -- the author, Tory sympathizer, fixed point on the punditry circuit, and a-thousand-words-a-day contributor to his Internet me-zine AndrewSullivan.com -- got an invitation from Michael Comlish, a director with the Washington Shakespeare Company, asking if he wanted to audition for an upcoming production of "Much Ado About Nothing." On a lark, Sullivan went in to read and ended up with the part of Benedick, a leading role. "I was surprised," Sullivan said. "People in D.C. think they know me just because they've seen me on television talking about the Florida recount or about gay issues. Strangers come up and act so familiar it's almost as if they dated me."

"Initially, I confess I was really interested in Andrew's public persona, but having him in the play isn't just about celebrity," Comlish said the other night during a rehearsal at the company's theatre, in Arlington, Virginia, where the play will open on April 23rd. "I don't know how Andrew feels about the analogy of John Waters putting Patty Hearst in his movies, but it's much more complicated than that anyway. It was completely intuitive, this idea."

Sullivan raised his fingers to imply quotation marks, and said, "It's a meta-moment. My doing this play, it's so meta I shouldn't even talk about it, because then it becomes, like, double-meta." He went on, "Benedick does represent a kind of person who's quite common in D.C.: extremely articulate, highly intelligent, but emotionally unavailable and immature." Besides himself, he named a number of prominent political journalists. "Except he's a lot more interesting than most people in Washington." He named some more.

Comlish was wearing suede sport-mocs and a plaid shirt half ...