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    ‘A Strange Loop’ Review: A Dazzling Ride on a Mental Merry-Go-Round

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    Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning meta musical arrives on Broadway with its uproarious dialogue, complex psychology and eclectic score intact.When the homophobic, God-fearing, Tyler Perry-loving mother of Usher, the protagonist of the remarkable musical “A Strange Loop,” describes her son’s art, she uses the word “radical.” She doesn’t mean it as a compliment.But “A Strange Loop,” Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning meta musical about a Black queer man’s self-perception in relation to his art, is radical. And I definitely mean that as a compliment.This musical, a production of Page 73, Playwrights Horizons and Woolly Mammoth Theater Company, forgoes the commercial niceties and digestible narratives of many Broadway shows, delivering a story that’s searing and softhearted, uproarious and disquieting.“A Strange Loop,” which opened Tuesday night, isn’t just the musical I saw in the packed Lyceum Theater a few evenings ago; it’s also the musical Usher (Jaquel Spivey), a 25-year-old usher at the Broadway production of “The Lion King,” is writing right in front of us.He’s facing a few hurdles, namely his intrusive thoughts, embodied by the same six actors who originated the roles in the 2019 Off Broadway premiere: L Morgan Lee, James Jackson Jr., John-Michael Lyles, John-Andrew Morrison, Jason Veasey and Antwayn Hopper. They give voice to his anxieties of being a plus-size Black queer man, his alcoholic father’s constant denigration and his mother’s pleas to stop running “up there in the homosexsh’alities” and produce a wholesome gospel play instead.Through scenes that move between Usher’s interactions with the outside world, like a phone conversation with his mother or a hookup, and a constant congress with his most devastating notions of himself, “A Strange Loop” pulls off an amazing feat: condensing a complex idea, full of paradoxes and abstractions, into the form of a Broadway musical.Jackson’s script for what Usher calls a “big, Black and queer-ass American Broadway” show and Stephen Brackett’s lively direction both cleverly find comedy, critique and pathos in contradictions. “A Strange Loop” shrewdly negates itself at every turn: Usher may resent the shallow pageantry of commercial theater, poking fun at such tourist bait as “The Lion King,” but he also steals the names of Disney’s favorite wildcats for his family, calling his father Mufasa and his mother Sarabi. (It’s satisfying to note that “A Strange Loop” is playing just down the street from the Minskoff Theater, which has housed the Broadway goliath since 2006.)There’s something almost naughty about the show’s subversions. “I’m sorry, but you can’t say N-word in a musical,” says one of Usher’s thoughts, imagined as the “chair of the Second Coming of Sondheim Award.” But the 100-minute show is comfortably potty-mouthed, containing repeat utterances of that very N-word, as in the catchy yet malevolent chorus to “Tyler Perry Writes Real Life.”The six actors surrounding Spivey, seated in jeans, embody his competing thoughts, from left: James Jackson Jr., L Morgan Lee, Antwayn Hopper, John-Andrew Morrison, Jason Veasey and John-Michael Lyles.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe paradox at the center of it all, of course, is Usher himself, whose brazen theatricality and caustic wit lies beneath his meek exterior. Though a newcomer — this is not only his Broadway debut but also his first professional gig after graduating from college last May — Spivey gives an earnest, lived-in performance. He shrinks away, tucks his chin, rounds his back into the concave silhouette of a turtle shell and gives bashful sideways glances so tender they could melt an ice cream cone in winter.But there’s also a thorny underside to Spivey’s Usher; he spits out phrases, pops his hip and snaps his head in a scathing display of Black stereotypes. His most searing jokes leave a satisfyingly sour aftertaste, like the bitters at the bottom of an unmixed drink. When a cute guy on the train asks him, “Did you see ‘Hamilton’?” Usher responds with an offhand sneer, “I’m poor.”Usher’s thoughts are vibrant foils, each confidently strutting the stage in Montana Levi Blanco’s wide-ranging costume designs (coordinated ensembles in neutral colors, neon and glitter-speckled accessories, fishnets and latex fetish gear) and twerking and thrusting in Raja Feather Kelly’s uninhibited choreography.A whirligig of worries, memories and concerns, Usher’s thoughts spin daily in his head. Jackson nails his comic beats in a piquant performance, full of withering looks and haughty snickers, while Veasey is suitably horrifying when he embodies Usher’s father, drunkenly questioning his son about his sexuality.Hopper, who most recently appeared as the monstrous pimp in the New York City Center’s production of “The Life,” and has a bass voice with the richness of hot honey, is downright viperous in the musical’s most harrowing scene, set ironically to an upbeat country rhythm. It’s is one of the best examples of the score’s incongruous approach.From left: Jackson, Lyles, Veasey, Spivey, Hopper, Morrison and Lee in the show, with choreography by Raja Feather Kelly.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Exile in Gayville,” in which Usher hesitantly logs into a flurry of dating apps only to be flooded with rejections, is buoyant pop-rock. And when Usher encounters a slew of disapproving Black ancestors like James Baldwin and Harriet Tubman, the song (“Tyler Perry Writes Real Life”) is a slow, steady creep. The whimsical woodwinds and skippy beat of “Second Wave” undercut its lyrics about loneliness and, well, ejaculation.In one instance, however, the production strikes a simple note. In one scene, Lee portrays a “Wicked”-loving tourist who gives Usher a pep talk, urging him to tell his truth in a sincere, optimistic song that recalls that show’s “Defying Gravity.” Given the calculated sharpness of the rest of the musical, especially regarding the commercialism of Broadway, such a carpe diem song feels out of place. The balance is sometimes off in other respects too: On the night I attended, the cast was ever so slightly off-tempo, and some lyrics were muffled by the bombast of the orchestra.Arnulfo Maldonado’s set design aptly captures the many entryways “A Strange Loop” opens into its protagonist’s — and playwright’s — mind. Throughout most of the show Usher stands before a simple brick backdrop with six doorways through which his thoughts pass in and out. That is, until the stage transforms speedily into a grim spectacle of neon lights and exaggerated embellishments, reflecting everything Usher refuses to produce in his own art. The lighting (design by Jen Schriever) — which frames the stage in concentric rectangles — is a nod toward the show’s nested conceit, and the gradual fade-outs and the blitz of radiant hues complement the sections.The tricky task I face as a critic is figuring out how to write about a work whose brilliance has already been noted. The New York Times named the show a critic’s pick in 2019, and I wrote briefly about the show’s Broadway tryout in Washington, D.C., this fall. It’s already won the Pulitzer.And yet, it seems as if there is no measure of praise that could be too much; after all, this is a show that allows a Black gay man to be vulnerable onstage without dismissing or fetishizing his trauma, desires and creative ambitions. Now that’s some radical theater.A Strange LoopAt the Lyceum Theater, Manhattan; strangeloopmusical.com. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. More

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      Review: ‘To My Girls,’ a Toast to Millennial ‘Instagays’

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      Put three gay frenemies in a Palm Springs Airbnb and what happens? In JC Lee’s new comedy, not enough.They don’t seem to like one another very much, these three gay besties weekending together at a tacky Airbnb in Palm Springs.Castor, an Asian American writer scraping by as a shift supervisor at a Starbucks in Sherman Oaks, doesn’t want to room with Leo, a Black “Queen of Queer Theory” with whom, on previous vacations, he’s had fights about marriage equality.He and Leo do agree, though, that Curtis, a hookup hound with cheese-grater abs, is an irredeemable narcissist, unable to curb his buff white privilege for more than 30 seconds no matter how many times he’s called out for it.Curtis just wants everyone to have a good time, as long as it’s on his own terms. He treats Leo as a good-luck charm and Castor as a throw pillow: comforting and disposable. His loyalty is to his Instagram followers.If this round-robin of frenemy fire puts you in mind of “The Boys in the Band,” Mart Crowley’s 1968 play about catty and self-hating gay men a year before Stonewall, you aren’t far off. JC Lee’s muddled new comedy, “To My Girls,” which opened on Tuesday in a Second Stage Theater production, does function, in part, as a millennial update to the earlier and much more pointed work. Call it “The Boys in the Sand,” set not at the dawn of liberation but at its eyes-wide-shut dusk.Like Crowley’s play, “To My Girls” assembles a clutch of 30-somethings — Castor (Maulik Pancholy), Leo (Britton Smith), Curtis (Jay Armstrong Johnson) and a fourth who arrives later — in a safe space where they can be themselves. Here, the space isn’t a mod Greenwich Village apartment but a midcentury bungalow bursting with winky accents that create what one character calls a “Jonathan Adler aesthetic.” (The eyestrain-inducing room and the fake palms outside it are by Arnulfo Maldonado; the desert glare and rippled reflections by Jen Schriever.)“To My Girls” also echoes “The Boys in the Band” in providing contrast to the bickering, self-involved central characters with two outsiders: Bernie (Bryan Batt), the 60-something gay Republican who owns the Airbnb, and Omar (Noah J. Ricketts), a happy 20-something hottie Castor brings back from a bar. To Omar, no less than Bernie, the others look like weird exhibits in a museum of unnatural history.From left, Bryan Batt, Johnson, Smith and Pancholy performing for followers of one of the play’s Instagram-obsessed characters.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesThat effect is apparently what Lee wants. “Imagine the future archaeologist who has to sort through social media to write their thesis on millennial queens,” Leo says, not thrilled by what he assumes the archaeologist will conclude.If “To My Girls” is a first draft of that thesis, it’s not a convincing one; its arguments, which are little more than quips, point in too many directions. Do “Instagays” posing “topless with Maya Angelou quotes as their caption” signal, as Castor suggests, the death knell of queer fabulousness? Or, as Leo counters, is heteronormativity the poison? Or, as the play itself seems to demonstrate, is everything really just fine?Lee, whose play “Luce,” from 2013, is as tightly wound as this one is aimless, seems to want it all ways. Social media and conformity may be killing gay culture, but everyone participates joyfully in the music video Curtis is making to attract more followers. It’s the jolliest thing in the show: a synchronized dance to the Pussycat Dolls song “When I Grow Up,” performed in heels, wigs and diaphanous floral-print caftans. (The costumes, and lack thereof, are by Sarafina Bush.)“I wanna be famous/I wanna be a star,” they lip-sync with no irony.That the routine must pass as one of the play’s high points is part of the problem, indicating how little is happening otherwise. Yes, one character sleeps with another, upsetting a third, but nothing much comes of it. The political and generational arguments, not exactly fresh in the first place, change no one’s mind, perhaps because, as in “The Boys in the Band,” everyone’s blitzed within minutes of arrival. (The play’s title is a toast.) What the high-octane margaritas do for the characters, the quick-sketch rhythms of the writing do for the drama: delink action from reaction. Expediency is all.Noah J. Ricketts, center, with Batt, left, and Pancholy in JC Lee’s comedy, directed by Stephen Brackett.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesWhen the jokes are good enough, that’s diverting in small doses. Castor, analogous to Harold, the “ugly, pockmarked Jew fairy” in “The Boys in the Band,” gets the best lines, often at his own expense — and Pancholy sells them well. In the play’s most compelling scene, with Ricketts’s witty Omar, you can see Castor growing out of his old, self-hating self toward something new, even as you wonder whether he has done so before, perhaps many times, and reverted.Though the setup of that scene is not credible, and it lasts only five or six minutes, I could have watched a whole play that built its smart observations into meaningful conflict that alters characters. Unfortunately, the actual play disposes of such moments instantaneously, and thus, under Stephen Brackett’s keep-it-snappy direction, has no cumulative power. At the end, everyone’s basically where they started, except hung over. You don’t doubt that another weekend in another few years would play out just the same.Which is not how life goes — and certainly not how gay life does. Change has been so big and breakneck since “The Boys in the Band” that you can hardly tell the backlashes from the front ones. Even a comedy should acknowledge that, as Drew Droege did in “Bright Colors and Bold Patterns” and “Happy Birthday Doug,” a pair of scalding one-man shows about those left mangled on the tracks as the gay rights locomotive chugs on.No one is mangled, or even much moved, in “To My Girls,” a play that asks gay men to “protect the fire that keeps you flaming” but never shows what the fire is made of. Tequila, perhaps?To My GirlsThrough April 24 at the Tony Kiser Theater, Manhattan; 2st.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      In Washington, a Princess Party and a Carnival of Self-Loathing

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      Two shows with Broadway aspirations, “Once Upon a One More Time” and “A Strange Loop,” represent opposite extremes of what a big, mainstream production can be.WASHINGTON — Sidney Harman Hall was bustling before a recent matinee of “Once Upon a One More Time,” a revisionist fairy tale mash-up scored with Britney Spears songs at Shakespeare Theater Company here. People were taking group selfies at one of two step-and-repeats. A few girls — and women — tittered in tiaras. Purple T-shirts and tote bags with the show’s title and the names of storybook princesses were being sold. And the theater, which has a capacity of about 700, had no empty seats in sight. At least from the outside, “Once Upon a One More Time” looked like the kind of splashy show you might find on Broadway.I was in Washington for the weekend, at the first post-opening matinee of the show, and it wasn’t the only musical in the neighborhood with Broadway aspirations; the second show I saw here, Woolly Mammoth’s production of “A Strange Loop,” by Michael R. Jackson, has just announced plans for a Broadway run in the spring. It’s a more daring work: a meta show about a queer Black playwright writing a show about a queer Black playwright that opened Off Broadway in 2019 and won the Pulitzer Prize.Two very different shows in two very different theaters less than a mile apart: “Once Upon a One More Time” and “A Strange Loop” represent opposite extremes of what a Broadway production can be.Written by Jon Hartmere and directed and choreographed by the husband-and-wife team Keone and Mari Madrid, “Once Upon a One More Time” is set inside an abstract representation of the world of children’s storybooks. That’s to say that whenever a child opens a book of fairy tales, the denizens of this magical kingdom must act out the classic plots for the reader. Meanwhile, the princes and princesses — Snow White (Aisha Jackson), the Little Mermaid (Lauren Zakrin), Sleeping Beauty (Ashley Chiu), the Princess and the Pea (Morgan Weed), Rapunzel (Wonu Ogunfowora) and several others — hang around like on-call workers, waiting for their boss, the Narrator, to direct them through the scenes of their tales, which they must obediently act out in order to have their happily ever after.Princesses take a stand: From left, Lauren Zakrin, Selene Haro, Ashley Chiu, Adrianna Weir (seated), Wonu Ogunfowora, Aisha Jackson, Jennifer Florentino and Amy Hillner Larsen.Mathew MurphyBut Cinderella (Briga Heelan) isn’t happy, and becomes even less so after she learns that her Prince Charming (Justin Guarini) is being paid for his services while she isn’t. Then Cinderella meets the Notorious O.F.G. (that’s Original Fairy Godmother, comically played by Brooke Dillman), who comes all the way from the mystical land of Flatbush, Brooklyn, to give poor Cin a copy of “The Feminine Mystique.” Suddenly enlightened by feminist theory, Cinderella leads her fellow princesses in protest, demanding that they be allowed to write their own stories.The audience cheered at the more clever pairings of popular Spears songs with important plot points, like an unfaithful prince singing “Oops! … I Did It Again” or Cinderella’s evil stepmother singing “Toxic.”But as I watched the show, I wondered: Who is the target audience for this? So many Broadway shows are aimed at a general audience, and similarly, “Once Upon a One More Time” seems to want to appeal to both children and adults. The fairy tale premise (nodding to shows like “Into the Woods” and “Shrek”) and the earnest sermonizing seem to point to an audience of kids. But the lines of dialogue about microaggressions (the Narrator warns Cinderella about being “difficult,” getting “hysterical” and using a “shrill” voice, all of which made the audience gasp), along with some mild sex jokes, are clearly aimed at knowing adults. Plus, call me conventional, but I doubt a children’s show would include a song called “Work Bitch.” In aiming for a Broadway stage, “Once Upon a One More Time” still seems to be figuring out what its prospective audience would look like.With its blatant messaging about female empowerment and revisionist approach, not unlike two recent Broadway musicals — “Six” and “Diana,” both of which recast famous women from history as self-possessed and self-reliant feminist icons — “Once Upon a One More Time” reflects the broad strokes of modern-day feminism but shies away from anything too hefty or complex. That includes the pink-pigtailed elephant in the room: Spears herself, who has documented what she has called years of exploitation in her quest to end her conservatorship. So particularly the Britney faithful will most likely be disappointed to find the pop star absent from a show largely based on the products of her career.“A Strange Loop” has announced plans to transfer to Broadway in the spring. From left: James Jackson Jr., L Morgan Lee, Antwayn Hopper, John-Andrew Morrison, Jaquel Spivey (seated right), Jason Veasey and John-Michael Lyles.Marc J. FranklinAt Woolly Mammoth’s space, just a few blocks from Sidney Harman Hall, there were no selfie stations or gift kiosks. The theater seats less than 300 people, and the content of Jackson’s “A Strange Loop” could not be more different from “Once Upon a One More Time.”Directed by Stephen Brackett, “A Strange Loop” is a carnival of its protagonist’s self-loathing, his insecurities, his introspective reveries on sexuality and identity, society, family and religion. It’s hilarious until it turns vicious, and vice versa. And it defines itself through a critique of commercial productions, like the long-running Broadway show “The Lion King,” as well as through a deconstruction of the expectations society may have of a Black, queer artist, which can crush brave new work.The musical rejects the polite, family-friendly themes and the tidy endings of what its protagonist, a Broadway usher named Usher (Jaquel Spivey), sees at work. Full of references to sexual assault and racism, and with enough offensive language to fill a gallon-size swear jar, “A Strange Loop” aims to bring taboo topics to mainstream theater. The Woolly Mammoth crowd snapped and mmhmm-ed to lines breaking down queer and race politics; at one point a man in the row behind me got out of his seat and waved his arms around to the music as if he were at a rave — if raves played devastating songs about homophobia and abuse.Walking out of the theater afterward, I overheard a group of friends wonder if “A Strange Loop” could go to Broadway. One woman had reservations; she liked it, she said, but — and here she paused before awkwardly stumbling through her qualifier — it was a musical about AIDS.I held my tongue — because I could’ve mentioned that “Rent” and “Angels in America” were two Broadway shows about AIDS. Or that “A Strange Loop” is about so much more than AIDS. Or that this season, Broadway had “Dana H.,” a show about kidnapping and assault, and “Is This a Room,” about a real F.B.I. investigation — both fantastic, critically acclaimed works of art. Or that “Slave Play” brought similarly explicit language and sexual content to Broadway in 2019 and has now reopened.Or I could’ve simply said that this beautifully brutal work of theater is already headed to Broadway. More

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      ‘A Strange Loop’ Won the Pulitzer. Now It’s Coming to Broadway.

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      The playwright Michael R. Jackson describes his musical as “a big, Black and queer-ass American Broadway show.”“A Strange Loop,” Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning meta-musical, is coming to Broadway this spring.The show’s producers announced on Monday that the musical would run at the Lyceum Theater; they did not announce specific dates, but it is planning to open before the eligibility deadline for this season’s Tony Awards, which is expected to be in late April.The show is a self-referential musical comedy about a Black gay musical theater writer trying to write a musical about a Black gay musical theater writer. Unsparingly introspective and sexually straightforward, it was staged Off Broadway in 2019 at Playwrights Horizons in a collaboration with Page 73 Productions. The New York Times critic Ben Brantley called it “jubilantly anguished” and said it featured “an assortment of the kind of infectious, richly harmonic melodies that would have your grandparents leaving the theater humming. That is, if they hadn’t walked out before.”The musical went on to win the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in drama, and was described by the Pulitzers as “a meditation on universal human fears and insecurities.”Since November, “A Strange Loop” has been running at the Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington, where it received a rave review from The Washington Post. The critic Peter Marks called it “marvelously inventive” and “exhilarating.”Jackson said he was delighted to see the musical find a home on Broadway. “I think it’s significant because this show is one that made its way out of nowhere, and stuck to its guns and to itself,” he said. “That doesn’t happen often with new musicals.”And does he believe the musical can succeed in a Broadway dominated by jukebox musicals and adaptations of movies? “The challenge I laid out for myself is that ‘A Strange Loop’ is a big, Black and queer-ass American Broadway show,” he said. “I believe we can entice audiences from all over to come take part.”The musical is directed by Stephen Brackett and choreographed by Raja Feather Kelly; the Broadway cast has not yet been announced. The Broadway run will be produced by Barbara Whitman. More