A Strange Loop Review: A Big, Black, and Queer-Ass Revitalization of the Musical

Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop nudges the musical theater form in a startling new direction.

A Strange Loop
Photo: Marc J. Franklin

Among the weird, wonderful concepts brought to lexicographical life in John Koenig’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is “sonder,” a term that describes “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” That definition, rooted in a sort of terrifyingly expansive empathy, has clung to me since I first read it. But I have rarely seen the idea of “sonder” rendered in art as explosively as in A Strange Loop, a musical that immerses its audience into the infinitely vivid and complex existence of its narrator and protagonist Usher (Jacquel Spivey), who both creates and is the show itself.

Usher is an usher at The Lion King on Broadway, and he spends every intermission—and most of his waking life—fantasizing about the show he’s trying to write called A Strange Loop, about a Black, queer usher and musical theater writer creating a show called A Strange Loop about a Black, queer usher and musical theater writer creating a show…and so forth.

Few American musicals arrive on Broadway with as much acclaim as this one. Not only did A Strange Loop sweep most of the New York theater awards for which it was eligible during its 2019 Off-Broadway run at Playwrights Horizons, but it also garnered Michael R. Jackson, who wrote the book, music, and lyrics, a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2020.

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A Strange Loop has less in common with the other musicals that have won that award this century—Hamilton and Next to Normal—than it does with the experimental, structurally challenging recipients, like the 2019 winner, Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview, which constantly disrupt and subvert audiences’ expectations for how stories are meant to be told. And, like Fairview, A Strange Loop deploys unfamiliar storytelling tools to amplify unfamiliar on-stage voices: To be heard, a Black, queer character like Usher needs to shatter the confidence of audiences that they know the rules of this musical theater game.

Usher is the only real character here, as the rest of the ensemble, composed entirely of LGBTQ+ performers of color, play his Thoughts, who plague, praise, and prod him unceasingly. These include Usher’s Daily Self-Loathing (James Jackson Jr.) and his Supervisor of Sexual Ambivalence (L Morgan Lee), plus a number of less printable manifestations of his internal infragility. Throughout, Stephen Brackett’s staging and Raja Feather Kelly’s choreography allow each performer to shimmer with individuality. Each Thought also shows up in imagined conversations between Usher and his parents, his agent, and his would-be online hookups. As A Strange Loop progresses, Usher burrows himself ever deeper into his own unpredictable mind, and the more evident the show’s unstable structure, the more riveting it becomes.

As Usher, Spivey is an endearing, tireless marvel. Whether floating notes into his extraordinary head voice or belting satirical faux-gospel anthems, he provides a nuanced vocal performance that echoes Usher’s shifts from self-denigrating retrospection to bombastic showmanship. And in a musical that spells out exactly what emotional ingredients its hero is made of—like his daily self-loathing and sexual ambivalence—Spivey movingly absorbs each of them.

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Usher is a complete, rich enough character to contain all of the worlds depicted on stage inside him. Spivey is also at his funniest in a one-man rendition of a gospel play in the style of a Tyler Perry production. Indeed, it’s Usher’s mother’s most fervent wish that he pick up Perry’s mantle of creating church-driven art, thereby demonstrating his gratitude “after what me and your dad went through/To send your Black bootie to NYU.”

A Strange Loop
A scene from A Strange Loop. © Marc J. Franklin

Jackson’s vocal lines are sometimes haunting and lyrical, with softly thunderous dissonance from the orchestra occasionally chafing against the otherwise pleasant harmonies. Usher describes his reliance on “white girl music,” referencing Liz Phair and Joni Mitchell, whose voices the music sometimes seems to gently channel. But many of the songs are also melodically simple and aggressively repetitive, themselves strange loops. That seems to be intentional. After all, if the music doesn’t draw all that much attention to itself during the performance, the impact may be felt the morning after. And those earworms are certain to follow audiences home, gnawing remnants of Usher’s hamster-wheel of a compositional mind.

Less purposefully, the sound design often leaves the lyrics overpowered by the louder orchestrations. That’s the only weak spot in a production animated by Jen Schriever’s attention-focusing lighting, Arnulfo Maldonado’s steadily unfurling set, and, best of all, Montana Levi Blanco’s amusingly evocative costumes, which include the embodiment of Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave in human form and a pantheon of Grindr profile pics come to life.

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A Strange Loop is potently aware of its audience: “Blackness, queerness fighting back to fill this cis-het-all-white space,” Usher’s thoughts sing in the opening number before a Broadway crowd that, undoubtedly, will remain majority-white. “If you can’t please the Caucasians, you will never get the dough,” they remind him. A Strange Loop, especially now that it’s landed on Broadway, has tensions with its own reception built in. Usher’s tacit assumption is that his musical in progress won’t make it to Broadway, because is there a market for a “big, Black and queer-ass American Broadway show” when “critics clinically deny us/Then deny implicit bias”? That a musical about a man who must shape his identity and art in response to the anticipated critique of white audiences should itself be so reliant on the reception of white audiences is a complex but essential dimension of the show’s impenetrable webs.

But if the response of audiences who don’t look like the creator or his characters is visible at the Lyceum Theater itself, there’s another more personally devastating through line about how the show might be received by the religious, Black community in which Usher grew up. The increasingly harrowing scenes between Usher and his parents lose their silly edge, even as Usher continues to name the members of his family after Lion King characters.

While the Thoughts start to collectively play his parents, the façade of reality sharpens until there’s just one dad, Mufasa (Jason Veasey), and one mom, Sarabi (John-Andrew Morrison), condemning Usher’s queerness and the way that he’s depicted them throughout his work. As Usher contemplates creating the scene where he shares his art with his parents, who continue to pray for him to turn straight, he wonders whether he’s “scared to write that because then I might have to do it in real life or maybe I’m scared to do that in real life because then I might have to write it. Does that make any sense or am I just being totally stupid?”

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And though one Thought suggests in answer that Usher “might be overcomplicating,” A Strange Loop relies upon that level of introspective over-complication to make the case that Usher’s thoughts deserve a stage to themselves. In proving that they do, and in bringing Usher’s vivid and complex inner life all the way to Broadway with such gripping vibrancy, Jackson nudges the musical theater form in a startling, new direction.

A Strange Loop is now running at the Lyceum Theatre.

Dan Rubins

Dan Rubins is a writer, composer, and arts nonprofit leader. He’s also written about theater for CurtainUp, Theatre Is Easy, A Younger Theatre, and the journal Shakespeare. Check out his podcast The Present Stage.

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