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Usher’s homophobic, God-fearing, Tyler Perry-loving mother uses the word “radical” to describe her son’s art. He doesn’t say this as a compliment.
But Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning meta-musical “A Strange Loop,” about a black queer man’s own perception of his art, is is radical. And I definitely say that as a compliment.
A production by Playwrights Horizons and the Woolly Mammoth Theater Company, this musical forgoes the commercial sophistication and digestible narratives of many Broadway shows to present a heartwarming and soft-hearted, boisterous and disturbing story.
“A Strange Loop”, which was released on Tuesday night, is not just a musical I watched at the overflowing Lyceum Theater a few nights ago; The 25-year-old musical Usher (Jaquel Spivey), who is also in the production of “The Lion King” on Broadway, is writing right in front of us.
It faces several obstacles, namely, its intrusive thoughts embodied by the same six actors that make up the roles. 2019 Off Broadway premiere: L Morgan Lee, James Jackson Jr., John-Michael Lyles, John-Andrew Morrison, Jason Veasey and Antwayn Hopper). They express anxieties about being a plus-size black queer man, the constant humiliation of his alcoholic father, and his mother “begging him to stop running there on top of the world.” homosexuals” and produce a healthy gospel game instead.
Through scenes that oscillate between Usher’s interactions with the outside world, such as a phone call with his mother or a relationship, and a constant encounter with his most destructive ideas about himself, “A Strange Loop” is an incredible feat: condensing a complex idea is full of paradoxes and abstractions, In the form of a Broadway musical.
Jackson’s screenplay for what Usher calls “a great, Black and weirdly American Broadway” show and Stephen Brackett’s live directing find clever comedy, criticism, and a sense of pity at odds. “A Strange Loop” shrewdly rejects itself at every turn: Usher resents the shallow pomp of commercial theatre, he may be making fun of tourist bait like “The Lion King,” but he also steals the names of Disney’s favorite wildcats for his family. father Mustafa and mother Sarabi. (It’s gratifying to note that “A Strange Loop” has been played just below the Minskoff Theatre, home to the Broadway giants since 2006.)
There’s something almost mischievous about the show’s ravages. “Sorry but you can’t say the N-word in a musical,” says one of Usher’s imagined “presidents of Sondheim’s Second Coming Award”. But the 100-minute show is casually mouthy, featuring repetitive words of that N-word, as in the catchy but malicious chorus of “Tyler Perry Writes Real Life.”
The paradox at the center of all this, of course, is Usher himself, with his arrogant theatricality and burning wit beneath his docile exterior. Although he’s a newcomer – it’s not just his Broadway debut, it’s also first professional concert After graduating from college last May – Spivey gives a serious, lived-in performance. He pulls back, clenches his jaw, turns his back to the concave silhouette of a tortoiseshell, and shyly casts a sideways glance, so much so that in winter he could melt a cone of ice cream.
But Spivey’s Usher is also thorny on the underside; spitting out sentences, popping her hips, and snapping her head at a harsh display of black clichés. His bitterest jokes leave a satisfying sour aftertaste, like the bitterness at the bottom of an unstirred drink. “Have you seen Hamilton?” a cute man on the train asked him. when he asked. Usher, “I’m poor.”
Usher’s thoughts twerk in Montana Levi Blanco’s sweeping costume designs (coordinated suits in neutral colours, neon and glow-spotted accessories, fishing nets and latex fetish gear) each confidently taking the stage and twerking in Raja Feather Kelly’s unhindered choreography. and live foils that twerk. .
Caught in a whirlpool of worries, memories, and worries, Usher’s thoughts swirl in his head every day. While Jackson nails his comic beats with a sharp performance, full of withering glances and arrogant mares, Veasey is appropriately horrified when he embodies Usher’s father, when he drunkenly questions his son’s sexuality.
Hopper, who recently came out as the dreaded pimp, New York City Center’s production of “The Life””and has a bass voice with the richness of warm honey, downright viper in the musical’s saddest scene, set to an ironically upbeat country rhythm. It is one of the best examples of the inconsistent approach of the score.
“Exile in Gayville” is upbeat pop-rock, with Usher hesitantly tapping into a series of dating apps and overflowing with rejection. The song (“Tyler Perry Writes Real Life”) is a slow, steady creep as Usher encounters a number of disapproving Black ancestors like James Baldwin and Harriet Tubman. The strange whistles and chirping rhythms of “Second Wave” underline its words about loneliness and emptiness.
However, in one case, production takes a simple note. In one scene, Lee plays a “Wicked”-loving tourist who gives Usher a pep talk and encourages him to tell the truth in a candid, upbeat song reminiscent of the show’s song “Defying Gravity.” With regard to the calculated clarity of the rest of the musical, especially Broadway’s commercialism, such a carpe diem song is out of place. The balance is sometimes disturbed in other respects, too: The night I attended, the actors were a bit off beat and some words were muffled by the bombing of the orchestra.
Arnulfo Maldonado’s set design aptly captures the many entryways that “A Strange Loop” opens to the mind of the protagonist and playwright. Throughout most of the show, Usher stands in front of a simple brick floor with six doors through which his thoughts come and go. That is, until the scene quickly turned into a gruesome spectacle of neon lights and extravagant decorations, reflecting everything Usher refused to reproduce in his own art. The lighting (designed by Jen Schriever) framing the stage with concentric rectangles is a nod to the show’s intertwined arrogance, and the gradual fading and explosion of bright hues complete the episodes.
The challenge I face as a critic is to figure out how to write about a work whose brilliance has already been noted. The New York Times named the show a critic’s choice In 2019 and I wrote briefly about your show Broadway trial in Washington, DC, this autumn. It already won the Pulitzer.
And yet, there seems to be no measure of praise that could be too much; Ultimately, this is a show that allows a black gay man to be vulnerable on stage without denying or fetishizing his trauma, desires, and creative ambitions. Now that’s a bit of radical theatre.
A Strange Loop
at the Lyceum Theater in Manhattan; strangeloopmusical.com. Working time: 1 hour 45 minutes.
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