Though a critical and audience smash when it played a limited run at Playwrights Horizons in 2019 and subsequently won every award going including the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical, I never thought Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop would make it to Broadway. With such credentials, a Main Stem transfer would normally follow, but Jackson’s inventive autobiographical work focuses on a black, gay, plus-sized aspiring theater writer working on a show about a black, gay, plus-sized aspiring theater writer working on a…etc. etc.
Jackson’s brutally frank script and score include numerous graphic references to gay sex and equally raw use of the “n” word in its exploration of the protagonist’s sexual and racial identity. There’s even an elaborate parody gospel number where the chorus repeats “AIDS Is God’s Punishment” as Jackson’s rageful scream against the church’s rejection of the gay community. Not your usual Broadway fare. But this riotous and uninhibited portrait of a young man seeking his voice against a backdrop of homophobia and low self-esteem shines with wit and compassion.
Jackson’s free-form, riotous book and sparkling score follow Usher (an appealing and versatile Jacquel Spivey in one of the most memorable Broadway debuts in recent memory) as he toils in the ironic position of usher at The Lion King while he works on his musical theater piece, searches for love in all the wrong places, and struggles with his unaccepting family and his inner thoughts, played by a superb ensemble of six (L. Morgan Lee, James Jackson, Jr., John-Michael Lyles, John-Andrew Morris, Jason Veasy and Antwayn Hopper). This sextette embodies everything from Daily Self-Loathing to Agent Fairweather to Supervisor of Sexual Ambivalence and all the members of Usher’s dysfunctional family (named for Lion King characters.) Morrison is particularly moving as Usher’s religious mother, skirting away from stereotypes though he is playing a drag parody character.
Spivey is a charming and adorable lead, balancing Usher’s desperation with a bubbly enthusiasm. Watch his tour-de-force solo rendition of all the figures in a satire of a typical Tyler Perry movie.
Stephen Brackett’s production is essentially the same as it was at Playwrights Horizons, except it’s tighter and better paced. Whether this radical and unashamedly black and queer work makes it at the Lyceum remains to be seen, but A Strange Loop is a breath of new and fresh air on Broadway.
