A.O. SCOTT:  As it happened, Mr. Sheen and Detroit proved to be a disastrous match. The Fox, a lavishly ornamented, carefully restored 5,000-seat show palace evoking a lost golden age of spectacle, is beautiful, but the scene there was ugly, as a boisterous, liquored-up capacity crowd greeted Mr. Sheen with cheers that quickly turned to boos. The show — a ragged mix of video clips, ear-splitting music, profanity-laced monologues and clumsy attempts to encourage audience participation — did not so much end as collapse. After a little more than an hour Mr. Sheen turned the stage over to a rapper he said would “wake up” the increasingly belligerent spectators, or maybe calm them down. After a Snoop Dogg video, the house lights went up, and though the headliner briefly returned to trade insults with a mostly empty house, the evening clearly had not gone according to plan. If there ever was a plan. You could say that Mr. Sheen and the audience failed each other. The ticket buyers did not show him the “love and gratitude” to which he felt entitled, and he did not give them the kind of entertainment they thought they had paid for. But you could also say that the performer and the audience deserved each other, and that their mutual contempt was its own kind of bond. MORE

HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: Sheen then asked the audience what they wanted to hear. He shot down someone’s suggestion of AA stories, calling it boring, and promised to talk about crack instead. “I figured Detroit was a good place to tell crack stories,” he quipped. Loud boos and shouts of “You suck!” throughout the disasterous affair eventually caused Sheen to retort, “Already got your f—ing money, dude.” MORE

UPDATE: Sheen took the stage at the Chicago Theatre on Sunday night with a show that featured fewer video clips than his debut and had the actor telling anecdotes from his life (hmm, why do those changes sound familiar?). Plus, Sheen ditched the comedian stand-up act and added a Q&A segment with an interviewer. Despite the fixes, Sheen blamed reaction to the Detroit show not on himself, but on the opening night audience. Sheen reportedly urged the audience “not to become (expletive) Detroit tonight. Let’s show Detroit how it’s (expletive) done.” Some audience members chanted “Detroit sucks.” MORE

BRETT EASTON ELLIS: You’re completely missing the point if you think the Charlie Sheen moment is really a story about drugs. Yeah, they play a part, but they aren’t at the core of what’s happening—or why this particular Sheen moment is so fascinating. […] Anyone who’s put up with the fake rigors of celebrity (or suffered from addiction problems) has a kindred spirit here. The new fact is: If you’re punching paparazzi, you look like an old-school loser. If you can’t accept the fact that we’re at the height of an exhibitionistic display culture and that you’re going to be blindsided by TMZ (and humiliated by Harvey Levin, or Chelsea Handler—princess of post-Empire) while stumbling out of a club on Sunset Boulevard at 2 in the morning, then you should be a travel agent instead of a movie star. Being publicly mocked is part of the game, and you’re a fool if you don’t play along. Not showing up to collect your award at the Razzies for that piece of crap you made? So Empire. This is why Sheen seems saner and funnier than any other celebrity right now. He also makes better jokes about his situation than most worried editorialists or late-night comedians. A lot of it is sheer bad-boy bravado—just cursing to see how people react, which is very post-Empire—but a lot of it is pure transparency, and on that level, Sheen is, um, winning. MORE

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