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    Review: In ‘The Fires,’ a Triptych of Stories About Gay Men and Love

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    Raja Feather Kelly makes his playwriting debut with a spellbinding story of three generations of Black men at Soho Rep.The choreographer Raja Feather Kelly’s dance-theater works have made him a mainstay on the downtown arts scene. With his latest piece, “The Fires,” Kelly is making his debut as a playwright. Rarely does a show live up so honestly to its title — wrecking and illuminating in equal measure.In his lustrous, emotionally textured play, which opened on Tuesday at Soho Rep, three gay Black men are stuck in a railroad apartment. But those men — Jay, Sam and Eli — are not roommates; they live in the same space across separate time periods: 1974, 1998 and 2021. Since the actors rarely leave the elongated stage, the characters’ stories play out in tandem.In the ’70s, Jay (Phillip James Brannon) lives with his lover, George (Ronald Peet), and becomes depressed while journaling about the Greek goddess Aphrodite, whom, he claims, is gravely underestimated: More than a mere mirthful goddess of love, Aphrodite was vengeful, war-driven and unsettled because, like Jay, she never knew her real father. Sam (Sheldon Best) in the ’90s is George’s son. He feels deeply misunderstood but finds a kinship with his recently deceased father while reading the journals he and Jay left in the apartment. Eli (Beau Badu) in the 2020s has the most sexual freedom but is stuck playing a tug-of-rope game with Maurice, (Jon-Michael Reese), a tender young man who has the potential to be Eli’s great love.Kelly does not have these characters speak directly to one another across time, but there are parallels in each scene that evoke a ghostly connection between the men. And the idea is supported by the scenic designer Raphael Mishler’s set: Most of the 1974 scenes occur on our left in a bedroom with a fireplace, typewriter and a retro two-knob radio; for the majority of the 2021 scenes, our attention is directed to the right, to a living room with an electric fireplace, Eli’s laptop and a smart speaker. Time and technology leap forward, but human desire for heat, expression and a groove remain the same.Jumbling timelines on a railroad apartment of a set does present some direction challenges, as when characters in one period trek right in front of (but aren’t acknowledged by) characters in another. You can find yourself ping-ponging between these freewheeling vignettes, desperate to catch all of the action.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bringing ‘Teeth,’ a Feminist Awakening With a Lethal Bite, to the Stage

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      Michael R. Jackson is helping adapt the darkly comic horror film into a musical. But can a show about a teenager with vagina dentata sing?Michael R. Jackson doesn’t have a vagina. He also doesn’t not have one.“While I’m not a teen evangelical with teeth in my vagina,” he said, “spiritually I am.”Jackson’s spectral self-identity was a guiding light as he and the composer Anna K. Jacobs collaborated on “Teeth,” a new musical based on Mitchell Lichtenstein’s 2007 indie scary movie of the same name. It’s about a high school student named Dawn who discovers to her horror that she has vagina dentata — a myth, found across cultures and eras, about a vagina that has a lethal set of chompers. (The film is streaming on Tubi, and the show is in previews Off Broadway at Playwrights Horizons before a March 12 opening.)If you’re going to musicalize a horror movie, “Teeth” is a doozy, and a gamble. Darkly comic and at times stomach-churningly gory, it’s a touchstone of feminist body horror and an exemplar, along with “I Spit on Your Grave” and “Jennifer’s Body,” of a rape-revenge film that indicts misogyny and body shame for the grip they have on women’s sexual autonomy.Jackson, the show’s lyricist, and, with Jacobs, co-writer of the book, said he was drawn to adapt “Teeth” because of how it frames horror and dark comedy around sex and conservative Christianity — two themes that also raged through his 2022 Broadway musical, “A Strange Loop,” a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner.“I know what it’s like to be afraid of your own body and to feel like somebody’s going to catch you masturbating and what that means, that you’re going to go to hell,” said Jackson, who grew up in the Baptist church. “I immediately glommed onto Dawn because I’ve had that internal experience.”That last line got a laugh from two other members of the “Teeth” creative team who, with Jackson and Jacobs, sat for an interview at Playwrights Horizons in Midtown Manhattan before a recent matinee: the director, Sarah Benson, and the choreographer, Raja Feather Kelly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Lempicka,’ New Musical About Art Deco Artist, to Open on Broadway

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      Rachel Chavkin of “Hadestown” will direct the show, which had developmental productions in Massachusetts and California.“Lempicka,” a new musical about the painter Tamara de Lempicka, will open on Broadway next spring after a decade in development.The show will join a Broadway season crowded with new musicals — at least a dozen are expected — at a time when the industry is facing smaller audiences, and higher costs, than it had before the coronavirus pandemic.An Art Deco portraitist who was married and had female lovers, Lempicka was born in Poland in 1898 and lived in Russia, which she fled because of the Russian Revolution; France, which she fled because of World War II; and then the United States and Mexico. Though her art and her social life glittered for a period, she later faded from prominence, and died in 1980. In recent years, her art has sold strongly; contemporary collectors of her work include Madonna.The show, scheduled to begin performances March 19 and to open April 14 at the Longacre Theater, features music by Matt Gould and lyrics by Carson Kreitzer, who also collaborated on the book. The director is Rachel Chavkin, the Tony Award-winning director of “Hadestown,” and choreography is by Raja Feather Kelly.“This is a massive epic, in the company of ‘Les Mis’ or ‘Evita,’ about this incredible artist who has been, for a variety of reasons, dismissed from our history books,” Chavkin said. “It’s fierce and queer and traces the first half of the 20th century through the eyes of this very complicated and ambitious and visionary woman.”Eden Espinosa, a onetime Elphaba in “Wicked,” will star in the title role. She is currently appearing in a new musical, “The Gardens of Anuncia,” running Off Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater. The rest of the “Lempicka” cast has not yet been announced.The musical has had two previous productions, at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts in 2018 and last year at La Jolla Playhouse in California, as well as several workshops and presentations over the years. (A previous effort to dramatize Lempicka’s life, a play called “Tamara,” ran in New York in 1987.)“Lempicka” is being produced by Seaview, a production company founded by Greg Nobile and Jana Shea, and Jenny Niederhoffer. It is being capitalized for up to $19.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. More

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      ‘Heart of Brick’ Review: Finding Love in Black Gay Clubs

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      The production, about the slow rewards of romance, starring the musician serpentwithfeet, premiered at the Joyce Theater in Manhattan on Friday.“My vibe is cozy, comfortable,” the R&B musician Josiah Wise, professionally known as serpentwithfeet, says near the start of “Heart of Brick.” Covered in a fuzzy blanket, sipping a glass of wine, he tells us that he prefers to stay at home.It’s an unusual introduction for a show in a theater. But “Heart of Brick,” which had its premiere at the Joyce Theater in Manhattan on Friday, is an unusual production. It’s somewhat like a staged concert of songs from Wise’s latest album, “GRIP,” which he performs live to recorded tracks. But it’s also like an 80-minute jukebox musical in which he stars as a version of himself, the songs threaded with scenes of dialogue heard in voice-over while he and the other performers silently act and dance.The story is sweet and slight. Having made a confidante of the crowd, Wise gets up the courage to visit a nightclub where he has heard his ex-boyfriend might be showing up. The ex-boyfriend might as well be named MacGuffin, since he isn’t mentioned again. Instead, Wise meets Brick (Dylan M. Contreras), one of the owners of the club, and the two fall for each other immediately. Will the affair last? Is Brick a heartbreaker?These are the dramatic questions.While the format takes some getting used to, it focuses the point of view. Wise — the only one talking and singing to us directly, the only one holding a microphone — is telling us his story. The songs, which he delivers in a sensitive, tremulous tenor, express his feelings of romantic hope and vulnerability. The dialogue, by Wise and Donte Collins in collaboration with the other performers, is naturalistic and conversational, not too subtle or shaded. A slightly catty clique of five clubgoers offers a little comic relief, but between jokes and what Wise calls “heart stuff,” heart stuff predominates.Directed by Wu Tsang, the production is mostly clear and economical. Carlos Soto’s set design suggests location changes between the club and Wise’s apartment with little more than curtains and rails. Costumes (by Julio Delgado) and lighting (by Luke Rolls) are also mostly understated.So, too, is the choreography by Raja Feather Kelly. The clubgoers slink and ripple in fluid patterns and florid armwork, occasionally stretching a leg impressively toward the ceiling, hinging backward to the floor or unspooling multiple spins. But however sinuous, they are stuck in the role of backup dancers to serpentwithfeet.Wise’s songs don’t advance the narrative or deepen insight into the characters, and several of the dialogue-to-song transitions are clunky. But mostly, the show is a cozy, comfortable experience, about the slow rewards of romance rather than sex; the lovers spoon but don’t even kiss.Cozy and comfortable, that is, until Darius — the drunk shaman played by Justin Daniels — arrives, posing riddles and warning about poisoned plants. The clubgoers, now dressed in floral ruffles to embody the plants, entangle Brick, who collapses in a coma. To save him, Wise must go on a quest for a mystical flower.The company members, in a costume change that is meant to depict them as poisonous plants.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesThis might be a swerve into allegory, the poisoned plants symbolizing gossip (which the show also represents, amusingly, in the form of news reports). It might be a dream ballet. It is certainly an attempt to heighten the drama of intimacy issues. Not strange enough to break into the realm of the surreal, it lifts off awkwardly, as at the end of his quest Wise makes an underpowered leap into the light.That swerve is a risky move that fails, but the true value of “Heart of Brick” lies in its simple portrayal of love between two men and in Wise’s affectionate celebration of Black gay clubs. It’s a fuzzy blanket of a show.“Heart of Brick”Through Friday at the Joyce Theater; joyce.org. More

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      Michael R. Jackson on the Soap Opera Origins of ‘White Girl in Danger’

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      The musical’s creator and creative team discuss their influences, including “Days of Our Lives,” “Showgirls” and D’Angelo.Hearing Michael R. Jackson, the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning playwright of “A Strange Loop,” speak about soap operas is like getting lost in a Wikipedia wormhole. With nary a pause, he rolls through the details of characters’ yearslong arcs, including every stolen identity, forbidden romance and vicious backstabbing — literal and figurative.He’s amassed decades of knowledge: He became hooked at 5 years old, when he started camping out in front of a “gigantic” wooden television set with his great-aunt. “I would watch ‘The Young and the Restless’ at 12:30, ‘Days of Our Lives’ at 1, ‘Another World’ at 2, ‘Santa Barbara’ at 3. And I would do that every day — Monday through Friday,” Jackson, 42, said in a recent interview. “The more I sat and watched with her, the more engrossed I got in these characters’ lives and the story lines. I sort of grew up obsessed with them.”So it’s not surprising that these shows, which he began recording on VHS when he was older, would eventually become a source of inspiration for Jackson: His new musical, “White Girl in Danger,” is rooted in soap opera themes and tropes. It’s now in previews in a joint production of Second Stage and Vineyard Theater, and is scheduled to open April 10 at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater.Latoya Edwards, center, as Keesha, a character who is trying to transcend racial stereotypes and get a more prominent story line.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe show takes place in Allwhite, a world defined by soap tropes and ruled by three white teen-girl stereotypes: Megan, Meagan and Maegan (pronounced MEG-an, Mee-gan and MAY-gan, FYI). Much of the show’s action takes place in and around Allwhite’s high school, where “the Megans” are preparing for a battle of the bands competition. Then there’s a Black girl named Keesha, who is trying to get her own story line and level up from being a forgettable Blackground character, forever stuck in slave narratives and police brutality stories. Meanwhile, the town’s residents are reeling from a mysterious spate of murders.In separate interviews, Jackson, along with the director, Lileana Blain-Cruz; the choreographer, Raja Feather Kelly; the set designer, Adam Rigg; and the costume designer, Montana Levi Blanco, spoke about the show’s many influences (including romance novels, Lifetime movies and Black girl groups) and how those influences were reimagined for the stage.Gothic melodramaJackson described “Days of Our Lives” as the soap opera that most shaped his understanding of and love for melodrama — specifically a 1993 episode in which the rich socialite Vivian Alamain (Louise Sorel) drugs her nemesis, Carly Manning (Crystal Chappell), and buries her alive. Jackson gushed about the scene, which begins with Vivian plucking the petals from a bouquet of roses, maniacally chanting “She loves me, she loves me not” atop Carly’s grave; he called Sorel’s “incredible” performance downright Shakespearean. “I was 12 years old and it was, to this day, one of the most seminal soap moments; it’s burned into me because I had never seen something so Gothic and terrifying happen,” Jackson said. “I was like ‘This is my form.’”There are many other iconic soap moments that are alluded to in “White Girl in Danger”: Adam Rigg designed a curtain inspired by a pink beaded rhinestone gown that Joan Collins, as Alexis Carrington Colby, wears in “Dynasty,” and looked back at a famous fight scene from the show between Alexis and Diahann Carroll’s Dominique Deveraux that leaves both characters — and the room they’re in — in tatters. Rigg used some of the background details of that scene — a vase, the peach and coral color palette of the room and furnishings — in the show’s set design.When it comes to characters and their roller-coaster arcs, Jackson’s favorites are Viki Lord (Erika Slezak), the “One Life to Live” matriarch with dissociative identity disorder whose alter egos emerge to dictate her romantic life, blackmail people, murder people and trap her enemies in secret rooms, and Kristen Blake (Eileen Davidson), the good-girl-turned-bad girl who also kidnaps and hides her enemies in secret rooms.Jackson’s love of these soaps runs deeper than the cloak-and-dagger plots and mustache-twirling villains. He even layered in musical references: The show’s opening number includes musical allusions to Peabo Bryson’s “One Life to Live” and the opening of “Another World,” sung by Gary Morris and Crystal Gayle.Three sides of Mark-Paul GosselaarMark-Paul Gosselaar, right, as the mischievous Zack Morris, with Mario Lopez as Slater, left, and Dustin Diamond as Screech, in “Saved by the Bell.”NBCThere are footprints of the late ’80s and early ’90s high school sitcom “Saved by the Bell” all over the musical, from Rigg’s kitschy Memphis-style design of the Allwhite school to Keesha’s colorblock windbreaker.And then there’s that show’s beloved Zack Morris, played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar. In “White Girl in Danger,” Jackson pulled from boyfriend tropes — not only Zack but also some of the other roles Gosselaar has played in his career — to mold a boyfriend character (known as Matthew Scott, Scott Matthew and Zack Paul Gosselaar, and played by one actor) opposite “the Megans.” Jackson cited as inspirations Gosselaar’s roles as a frat boy who sexually assaults a college freshman played by Candace Cameron in the TV movie “She Cried No” and as a loving, supportive brother in “For the Love of Nancy.”“This concept of three different boyfriends in one was born out of that, and Mark-Paul Gosselaar specifically, because he played all these parts really well,” Jackson said.Teen queen dreamsFrom left, Tara Reid, Rachael Leigh Cook and Rosario Dawson as small town musicians vying for a big break in the 2001 film “Josie and the Pussycats.”Universal Pictures, via Associated PressThe female clique atop the teen social hierarchy is a well-loved trope. For Kelly, the groups of alpha it-girls in movies like “Clueless,” “Jawbreaker” and “Heathers” greatly influenced how he choreographed “the Megans.”“The opening number, for me, is kind of like ‘Josie and the Pussycats,’” he said. “Everything they do is super cute and super meticulous.” There’s duality to their gestures, Kelly added, which can “flip from being really cute to being insidious.”Blain-Cruz mentioned “My So-Called Life,” and shows “about young women trying to navigate that in-between space of childhood and adulthood, but also claiming their own space.”“And those spaces generally tended to be occupied by white women or white girls,” Blain-Cruz said, noting that one of her favorite scenes to develop was a band rehearsal in which each of the girls’ performance styles recalls that of ’90s pop starlets.‘Hollywood, sex and murder’Gina Gershon, left, and Elizabeth Berkley in the 1995 film “Showgirls.”Murray Close/United ArtistsAffairs, dalliances and general sexcapades are hallmarks of soap operas, so “White Girl in Danger” follows suit with kooky seduction scenes, surprising bedfellows and sprays of bodily fluid. For the choreography of a scene featuring a sudden sexual reveal, Kelly enthusiastically references one of his favorite movies, the erotic 1995 drama “Showgirls.” He described it as “the wild and crazy cat-fight-love-festival that was between Elizabeth Berkley and Gina Gershon.”For Jackson, it wasn’t just the sexy daytime and prime time dramas that left an impression, it was also the work of the romance writer Jackie Collins.“I was like 10 years old and my older cousin gave me a copy of ‘Chances,’” Jackson said. “I devoured it, because it was so dirty. It was like my form of pornography, because I lived in a pretty strict religious home,” he continued. “That took me into this world of Hollywood, Vegas, gangsters, sex and murder.”Black music in the BlackgroundThere’s no “White Girl in Danger” without the Black characters who try to escape the racist, stereotypical Black stories in the Blackground. Three of the show’s Blackground women — Florence, Caroline and Abilene — serve as a kind of Greek chorus. For their fashion and choreography, Blanco and Kelly channeled the Pointer Sisters, the Mary Jane Girls, the Dreams, the Ronettes, even the trio of singer-narrators in “Little Shop of Horrors.” Kelly said the Blackground women represent “the trope of the three women 30 feet from stardom on the outskirts of every story.”For Tarik, a Blackground character whose roles are exclusively getting killed and going to jail, Black music was also prominent influence. “Tarik is every Black male stereotype from ‘Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ to its counterpart; he’s also D’Angelo. He’s also Ginuwine. He’s also Usher,” Kelly said, specifically calling out D’Angelo’s bare-chested video for “Untitled (How Does It Feel).” Though Tarik has his own deliberately underdressed jacket-open moment, Blanco’s costume design for him includes a “Fresh Prince”-style cap and Hammer pants. More

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      New Musical From ‘Strange Loop’ Writer to Run Off Broadway

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      “White Girl in Danger,” a soap opera satire by Michael R. Jackson, will be staged in New York next spring by Second Stage and Vineyard theaters.As a child, Michael R. Jackson would religiously watch soap operas with his great-aunt. “Days of Our Lives.” “Another World.” “Santa Barbara.” “The Young and the Restless.”He kept watching through high school. He interned at “All My Children” in college. And then he moved to New York, hoping to become a soap opera writer.Instead, he became a dramatist, and an acclaimed one at that: His first musical, “A Strange Loop,” a meta take on a Broadway usher writing his own musical, won both the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for best musical, and it’s now running on Broadway.Next spring, his sophomore musical will arrive Off Broadway. It’s called “White Girl in Danger,” and it’s a race-conscious sendup of the soap opera genre.“White Girl in Danger” imagines a soap opera set in a town called Allwhite, with a group of Black characters, called Blackgrounds, who are featured only in story lines about slavery and policing. One of those characters, Keesha, seeks to break that pattern by seizing a central story line from a trio of white protagonists, Meagan, Maegan and Megan, but in so doing she also risks running afoul of an Allwhite killer.“There’s a lot of genre elements coming from the soap opera, Lifetime movie, melodrama world,” Jackson said. “The idea for the show was going to be a broad satire, but then these conversations around representation, diversity, equity, inclusion started to happen in the theater world, and I started to think about those issues, and suddenly one molecule attached itself to another.”Jackson has been developing the musical since 2017, and last summer the incubator New York Stage and Film presented a two-day, concert-style reading of it in the Hudson Valley.The musical, with a 12-person cast, will be jointly produced by two New York nonprofits, Vineyard Theater and Second Stage Theater, and will be staged next spring at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater. The show, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz and choreographed by Raja Feather Kelly, is scheduled to start previews on March 15 and open April 10. More

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      ‘MJ’: Dancing the Pain, and Dancing the Pain Away

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      What is the role of choreography on Broadway? Two musicals, “MJ” and “A Strange Loop,” shed light on the dancing body.Don’t get me wrong: The musical “MJ” is a misfire on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to begin. “Thriller” looks like a scene out of “Cats.” The segment showing Michael Jackson’s dance influences — the Nicholas Brothers, Fred Astaire, Bob Fosse — is so poor in terms of skill level that I felt sorry for dance, the art form. Irritatingly, yet predictably, the show, directed by the ballet choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, has been nominated for 10 Tony Awards. It will run for ages. Michael Jackson — for all his flaws — is still Michael Jackson.But the production does have something to show about Jackson’s dancing body in all of its articulate anxiety. It made me think: What happened to that body when the boy became a man? How did his dancing change? Was something of his internal landscape exposed in his dancing for all to see? Did we ever really see it?When he was alive and building his pop canon of music and dance, it wasn’t always so easy to grasp how, beyond the nervous twitches of the choreography, his spirit was reflected in his dancing. So much about him was wrapped up in the fashion of the moment that you could forget about his body. (You couldn’t, after all, ignore the ever-morphing features of his face.) There were so many distractions along the way — the skin, the plastic surgery, the allegations of molestation against him.He was always hiding. His costumes were armor, masking his body, his interior life and even, for all of his extraordinary prowess, his physicality. In a sense, he made it possible for his impersonators to exist by crafting and perpetuating a Michael Jackson that anyone could borrow and put on. Like a rhinestone glove. Or a moonwalk.The Broadway musical tries its best to focus on Jackson, the perfectionist artist, MJ, as the adult Jackson is listed in the Playbill. By contrast, the role of Little Michael makes the adult seem more fragile and more bizarre. (There’s a third Michael, too, in between them in age; he makes less of an impression.) You can’t help but notice the dramatic, drastic changes that his dancing body displayed over time. From his childhood as the youngest brother in the Jackson 5 to the final rehearsals for his Dangerous tour of 1992, the moment that frames the show, we see the way turmoil ripples through his body. For Little Michael, tormented by his father, dance is an escape; for the older MJ, it’s a way for his body to scream in ways he couldn’t with words. His voice, high and whispery, never had the same emphatic force.Christian Wilson, front, as Little Michael in “MJ.” Wilson’s “ease, his winning blend of naïveté and wisdom,” bring the musical to life, our critic says.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe older MJ, in the show, fights for rigid precision — movement phrases are knotty, spiky, full of angles, while Little Michael is smooth and enviably relaxed. (Obviously, dance styles changed drastically during that time, but the contrast seems as emotional as it is physical.) Two young boys alternate as Little Michael, Walter Russell III and Christian Wilson. I can only speak for Wilson, whose performance I saw, but it was his dancing that repeatedly snapped me back to attention.The 2022 Tony AwardsThis year’s awards, the first to recognize shows that opened after a long Broadway shutdown during the pandemic, will be given out on June 12.Lifetime Achievement: Angela Lansbury, an acclaimed and beloved star, will be honored with a special award during this year’s ceremony.Hugh Jackman: The actor may potentially win his third Tony Award for his role in “The Music Man.” He shared some thoughts on his life between film and theater.A New Star: Myles Frost is drawing ovations nightly on Broadway with his performance in “MJ,” a musical about Michael Jackson’s creative process.Feinstein’s/54 Below: The beloved basement club, which bills itself as “Broadway’s living room,” will receive an honor at the Tony Awards for excellence in the theater.As a musical, “MJ” can feel as distant and as inaccessible as a music video. Wilson’s presence — his ease, his winning blend of naïveté and wisdom — brought it to life. Even during the curtain calls, his hips kept flowing, perhaps more quietly, more internally than when he was in character, but he never lost hold of his gentle yet powerful groove.That unselfconscious fluidity throws into relief the rigidity and the constraint of MJ, as played by Myles Frost. Frost’s dancing accuracy is extraordinary; it reveals a body turning in on itself and hardening — lonely, brittle, concave. The tipped hat and rounded shoulders weren’t just about Jackson imitating one of his idols, Bob Fosse. Weren’t they also a way to hide (and guard) himself from the world?Jackson’s music was pop, but the way he used his body had such a hard edge that to watch footage of his actual Dangerous tour is to see something related to punk — not in sound, but in angst and speed, anger and attack. The tone is confident and clipped, but beyond the gleaming exterior, you sense pain. Did he even want to move in front of people? I can’t decide. At the start of a performance in Bucharest, he stands still, in profile, with his arms tense at his sides, for what seems like ages while the camera pans to a crowd on the brink of hysteria.Wait for it: Michael Jackson in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on the Dangerous tour.Alain Benainous/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty ImagesIt’s impossible to know who Jackson really was. “MJ” delivers yet another impersonation of the man we saw onstage and in videos. Often a dancing body reveals a certain truth about a person, but in Jackson’s case dancing might have been one more thing to hide behind, like another costume; it was a place he could control his body. He could be himself or the person he wanted to be: strong, powerful, sexy. Maybe the dancing body was the man, or his fantasy of himself.I don’t want to honor the choreographic approach in “MJ,” which is mostly cartoonish. But watching the dancing left me thinking about Jackson and what dancing became for him — something he was chained to, rather than a way to break free of the box he found himself in.Tony Awards: The Best New Musical NomineesCard 1 of 7The 2022 nominees. More

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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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