MJ The Musical Review: Broadway’s Latest Biographical Jukebox Musical Is a Thriller

The show is massively successful at demonstrating that Jackson was an extraordinary artist putting forth extraordinary art.

MJ The Musical
Photo: Matthew Murphy

“I wouldn’t change the past if I had to,” Michael Jackson once told Oprah Winfrey as he toured her through the amusement park rides built for kids at his Neverland Ranch in 1993. “I’m enjoying myself.” And uncontaminated joy, by way of moonwalk, is certainly the watchword at MJ The Musical, Broadway’s latest biographical jukebox musical.

The dancing, choreographed with both stylistic fidelity and sharp originality by Christopher Wheeldon (who also directs), the scene-stealing lighting design from Natasha Katz, and, most of all, the pyrotechnic vocal performances are all spectacular. But spectacle asks us to engross ourselves entirely in what’s seen, and there’s plenty unseen here. If the creative team—including bookwriter (and the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright) Lynn Nottage—hasn’t exactly changed the past, it’s certainly been carefully curated.

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MJ The Musical takes place in 1992, focusing on the final rehearsals before Michael (Myles Frost) launched a world tour of his Dangerous album, with the proceeds going to his charitable endeavors. It’s a precisely chosen date: Since the initial allegations of child sexual molestation were leveled against him in 1993, the show doesn’t need to address them. (Jackson was acquitted when he stood trial for these charges in 2005, but new posthumous claims emerged in Dan Reed’s controversial 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland.)

Even so, MJ The Musical seems to go out of its way to defend Jackson’s integrity, lest anyone carry their doubts about his innocence into the theater. As Nottage portrays him, Michael is a gentle genius, willing to sacrifice anything, even his beloved Neverland Ranch, to ensure that he can make a difference for children through his charitable goals. He’s attacked constantly by the ferocious and fallacious media, whose unrelenting aggression has deepened Michael’s addictions to painkillers and whose nosy personal questions at a press conference spur Jackson to sing an impassioned rendition of his 1995 song “They Don’t Care About Us,” in a first-act finale that seems to function as a preemptive rebuttal to the most damning headlines. Which is to say that Nottage, one of the most serious, thoughtful dramatists working today, seems uncomfortably trapped between wanting to interrogate her protagonist’s psychological backstory and upholding the project’s inherently reverential position.

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Structurally, MJ The Musical is in line with most of the latest jukebox musicals venerating the likes of Donna Summer, Cher, Gloria Estefan, and Carole King. And as in Summer: The Donna Summer Musical and The Cher Show, this musical’s pop icon is played by not one but three actors: Frost, the buoyant Tavon Olds-Sample as the adolescent iteration, and, most wonderful of all, at the reviewed performance, the jubilant Christian Wilson, who belts out a transcendent talent-show performance of “Climb Every Mountain” as Little Michael.

MJ The Musical
A scene from MJ The Musical. © Matthew Murphy.

Other music legends—Berry Gordy (Antoine L. Smith) and Quincy Jones (Apollo Levine) among them—flit in and out of flashbacks. Most of the songs appear in performance or rehearsal scenes (the invigorating arrangements are by Jason Michael Webb and David Holcenberg), but some are integrated into the story: The crowning showstopper is a stunning version of “I’ll Be There,” a duet between Little Michael and the electrifying Ayana George as Michael’s mother. Her impassioned high notes alone are worth the price of admission.

These flashbacks arrive courtesy of MTV reporter Rachel (Whitney Bashor). She’s been given backstage access as the Dangerous World Tour nears its first show, and she’s ready to interrupt rehearsals at a moment’s notice if it means snaring a spontaneous soundbite from the King of Pop. Much of the self-insight that Rachel coaxes out of Michael comes directly from the real-life, probing hour-long interview that Oprah Winfrey snagged a year later in 1993, months before those allegations ultimately derailed the tour. What made that conversation so tensely revelatory was how hard Winfrey worked to build a real relationship. Rachel, though, is no Oprah, and it seems a little far-fetched that the guarded star would open up so quickly, especially about the suffering inflicted by his abusive father, Joe (Quentin Earl Darrington), who demanded flawlessness from his cadre of talented children.

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Perfectionism—the root of Michael’s talent, as well as his father’s greatest curse—is the true villain of MJ The Musical. The tension in the rehearsal room surrounds the singer’s demands for a “toaster” entrance; he wants to be catapulted from beneath the stage at the start of his concert, but his team blanches at the expense and risk involved. Though this isn’t the stuff of great drama, it’s illustrative enough of Michael’s desperation to constantly top himself and his terror of losing the audience’s attention, even for a moment. And while he shies away from superlatives about his place in the pantheon, he’s also willing to fight tooth and nail to preserve it. “This opening came to me in a dream,” Michael explains to his tour director, Rob (also played by Darrington), “and if we don’t use it, God will give this idea to Prince.”

Frost captures both Jackson’s giggly timidity off stage (“I’m ticklish,” he testifies when a camerman puts on his mic) and his unwavering assurance when performing. He nails Jackson’s vocal and physical mannerisms (not to mention the moonwalk) without crossing over the line into impersonation. That’s most impressive in the ballads—“Man in the Mirror” foremost among them—where he seems to sing from a place of deep longing with a clear, psychologically sophisticated vision of who it is that Michael wants to become. What’s missing most from the depiction, though, are specific moments that make Michael, to paraphrase that song, take a look at himself and make a change; since Frost’s dialogue is largely limited to Q&A exposition, the Michael we meet at the beginning doesn’t have space to evolve.

But if MJ The Musical expends excess energy trying to make the case, perhaps unprovably at this point, that Michael was a good person, it’s massively successful at demonstrating that Jackson was an extraordinary artist putting forth extraordinary art. “If I’m not moving, then I get kind of restless,” Michael says, and the show surges with style and strength whenever the ensemble joins him. Long-form storytelling doesn’t matter much in the midst of “Smooth Criminal” (here positioned by Wheeldon alongside clips of Jackson’s choreographic forefathers, Fred Astaire, Bob Fosse, and the Nicholas Brothers) or “Wanna Be Startin’ Somthin’” or “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough.” For some complex insight into the man himself, there’s always Oprah. For everything else, MJ The Musical is a thriller.

MJ The Musical is now running at the Neil Simon 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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