Who, Me?

A hall of mirrors in “A Strange Loop,” by Michael R. Jackson.

- Vinson Cunningham

The other day, on one of those transitsoured Saturdays now so common in New York, I showed up late to the theatre. When I asked the publicrelations representative for my tickets, she looked stricken. “Vinson Cunningham?” she said. “I—I’ve already signed you in.” There was someone in my seat, and he’d used my name to get there. I spent the first act of the show in a makeshift seat behind the orchestra, fighting back distraction. Who was this person? How had he known that there were tickets in my name for this show, on this afternoon? By intermission, I’d worked myself up into a kind of panicked anger. I walked to the seat that should have been mine, and sitting there was, indeed, a guy who looked just enough like me to spook me even more than I’d already been spooked. Like me, he wore glasses, had rounded features a tick too big for his face, and maintained an empty-lot beard. We had a quick, heated, unsatisfying exchange during which he admitted nothing and I said nothing as memorable or macho as I’d hoped to say. But, shortly after I’d retreated, the man and his guest looked around, got up, and quickly left the theatre.

A few days later, with this inexplicable second self still on my mind, I saw “A Strange Loop,” a musical written and composed by Michael R. Jackson anddirected by Stephen Brackett (produced in association with Page 73, at Playwrights Horizons). The show’s protagonist, Usher (Larry Owens)—like his creator—shares a name with a famous pop singer. To double the doubling, Usher works as an usher at “The Lion King” on Broadway.