The standard advice for aspiring authors is “Write about what you know.” In the case of A Strange Loop, both librettist-composer-lyricist Michael R. Jackson, and his motley but magical protagonist Usher, have chosen to write about what they want to know: namely, the key to identity; the answer to the age-old riddle of human consciousness. It’s like the kid sang in A Chorus Line, “Who am I, anyway? / Am I my resumé?,” but more profound.
The 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner is making its overdue, pandemic-postponed Broadway debut, having premiered under the aegis of Playwrights Horizons and Page 73 Productions (NYC) and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (Washington, D.C.). Its reemergence allows the theatergoing public to become aware of what a really unusual bird this show is, detailing the efforts of an overweight, Black, gay theater usher named Usher, to pen a musical about an overweight, Black, gay theater usher who is attempting to write a musical about an overweight, Black…. Strange enough loop for you, so far?
What is a “strange loop,” anyway? Permit me to do some of the heavy lifting, ‘cause I had to look it up too. Popularized by cognitive scientist and philosopher Douglas Hofstadter (as well as the title of a Liz Phair song Jackson says he was enamored of), it’s the notion that any really complex system—be it a language, a musical form like a fugue, or yes, the human brain—has the ability to observe itself: to refer to itself, to loop back onto itself. Think of those crazy M.C. Escher prints of people or staircases impossibly rising up or down. Closer to home, there’s the title sequence of the sitcom Modern Family, where each TV monitor finds itself deeper and deeper within the one before.
Psychologically speaking, I suppose one could oversimplify the unraveling of somebody’s personal “eternal golden braid” (the subtitle of a Hofstadter tome) as a merely tedious display of navel-gazing. But Usher’s self-exploration is engaging and even endearing, not some narcissistic routine. That’s partly because he’s intensely likeable, as embodied by Jaquel Spivey in his first professional gig out of college. Stepping into the acclaimed shoes of Larry Owens, who can be heard on the Off-Broadway cast album, Spivey takes command of the stage (and our hearts) and never lets go. He embodies all of Usher’s insecurities, while letting us glimpse the germ of self-actualization within.
Seeking sexual encounters he expects will humiliate him, he throws himself into them anyway. Furious at his belittling, bigoted, Bible-thumping family back home, he keeps returning their calls and keeps trying. And he’s exactly the kind of genial people-person you’d want to approach for assistance in a theater lobby, even though you know he just loathes his job. The role has all those dualities wrapped into it and then some, and Spivey exercises effortless control over every one.
Usher’s a people-person in another sense. He has six strands of “golden braid” working on him at all times: an ensemble of “Thoughts,” who alternately hector, insult, question, and discourage him. I see them as the Self-Sabotage Sextet, or in Jackson’s lexicon, “Usher’s perceptions of reality, inside and out.” Now hilariously, later terrifyingly, they represent all the negativity we battle, often transforming into the fantasies that never come to good, or the real-life friends and families who often as not disappoint. What a marvelous ensemble director Stephen Brackett has marshalled, choreographed smoothly by Raja Feather Kelly in his Broadway bow. Each Thought/reality perception is a distinct type and master of accents, and they meld like an improv company that’s been working together for ages.
It feels unfair to single any out, and all get their moments to shine. But I was particularly taken by L Morgan Lee as the one sympathetic soul to come to Usher’s aid, funnily enough during intermission at Lion King. “Life your life and tell your story in exactly the same way: truthfully and without fear!,” she sings. “Despite those who wish you would disappear / Find joy inside your life while you’re still here.”
Such positivity will sit well among audience members who may otherwise be uncomfortable with the super-raw language and sexually-charged situations, all far more common to Off-Off-Broadway lofts than the likes of the venerable Lyceum. I suspect the music—often repetitious, with hints of Philip Glass—will not be to everyone’s taste, and A Strange Loop is a particularly loud show, its rapid-fire lyrical wordplay hard to make out. (Director Brackett could do more to sharpen the focus so that we could see, more often, who’s singing what as an aid to comprehension.)
Yet there’s a shape and balance to this remarkable work which set it above most conventional musical entertainment. Following multiple musical vignettes of Usher’s sad sack Manhattan life, we are treated to a blistering satire of the oeuvre of billionaire entrepreneur Tyler Perry, for whose trafficking in stereotypes, and benign bigotry, Usher (and clearly Jackson) have no use. Cajoled by his money-hungry family to enter the Perry orbit, Usher executes a one-man distillation of a typical “chitlin’ circuit” script, doing all the voices. This speech is a tour de force destined to win acting scholarships for countless young thesps of color, for decades to come.
In its wake, there’s a wake. Usher’s mind and the action shift to a full-scale visit with the family, on the occasion of the funeral of a beloved young man who has died of AIDS. The event unleashes all of our protagonist’s fury (and Jackson’s most ambitious music), as he lashes out at the “loved ones” who failed to support him in his journey as “one lone Black gay boy who chose to turn his back on the Lord.” Brutal stuff.
And yet by the end he’s still standing. Still hoping. Still struggling with the pronoun “I,” yet resigned to the fact that our “I” is all any of us have got. So why not make the most of it?
A Strange Loop opened April 24, 2022, at the Lyceum Theatre. Tickets and information: strangeloopmusical.com
