The director of the show said, “The piece is larger than life, but it’s still life.” Her challenge has been to “keep the life part.”
More often than not, if the composer and playwright Michael R. Jackson was in or near the Lyceum Theatre after a performance of his suigeneris hit musical, “A Strange Loop,” during its recent Broadway run, fans and critics would gather around him, not just to have their Playbill autographed but to continue the conversation that the show had started. Usually, it takes an activist star, like Jane Fonda— or whoever is playing Aladdin—to cause a post-performance commotion outside a theatre. But a writer? A theatre nerd who wasn’t Lin-Manuel Miranda? A self-described “outsider’s outsider’s outsider” and a former usher for “The Lion King”? The protagonist of “A Strange Loop,” which closed in New York in January and opens at London’s Barbican in June, is, according to the script, a “fat, Black queer” man named Usher, who can barely support himself as he attempts to write a musical about the “strange loop”—the cycle of hope and rejection that his heart seems trapped in. Not exactly what you’d expect to be a box-office success. If anything, “A Strange Loop” is a show-biz story—complete with references to Stephen Sondheim and Scott Rudin—but it’s a show-biz story about how there is, in effect, no real stage to frame, let alone contain, an artist with Usher’s sensibilities (which is to say, Jackson’s): that is, until Jackson remade the American musical with “A Strange Loop.”
This story is from the April 10, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the April 10, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Profiles – Mr. Vengeance
The director of "Oldboy” and "The Handmaiden” brings his gift for spectacle to American television.
A Reporter at Large – The Assault
One of Ukraine's most skilled fighting units battles beneath a canopy of drones.
SNAP JUDGMENTS
Is it the end of the world if Kirsten Dunst isn’t around to witness it? I’m beginning to wonder.
BLEEDING HEART
Olivia Rodrigo’s exuberant yearning.
WARP SPEED
Anni Albers helped establish weaving as art—then left it behind.
THE MISSING LINK
How Delmore Schwartz tried to change poetry.
LOVE MACHINES
Why stories about robotic romance push our buttons.
HOW GULLIBLE ARE YOU?
Dont believe what theyre telling you about misinformation.
GET REAL
How video-game engines became the invisible infrastructure of our world.
FLIGHT OF FANCY
Flying cars have long been a symbol of a future that never came. Are they finally here?