Jaquel Spivey stars in A Strange Loop, at the Lyceum Theatre. Photo: Marc J. Franklin In the course of A Strange Loop, Michael R. Jackson’s “Big Black and Queer-Ass American Broadway” show, he gives two explanations for the title. Of course there would be two — Jackson’s stunning show is recursive, redundant, reflective, reflexive.
The plot, if that’s the right word for something so scattered, is about an usher named Usher who works at a show much like The Lion King. As Usher plays the Disney-approved return-to-your-seats chime, he also does battle with own brain. His six swarming Thoughts — including Daily Self Loathing , Sexual Ambivalence , and Financial Faggotry — nag and chasten him; they pester him about his inability to finish his musical, to satisfy theater’s gatekeepers, and to pay his loans.
The predicament of being observed and being one’s own observer are not issues you usually grapple with in a Broadway theater, and actually Jackson covers that stuff pretty fast. Where he goes deep is a particular anguish: Usher has homophobic parents whose beliefs negate him even as they say they are lifting him up. His mother calls him often, and these talks alternate between syrupy outpourings and ice-cold denials. Gay men treat him no better.
In a revelation-of-space trick Brackett resorts to late in the musical, the Thoughts’ dull gray portals roll away and we see a showy, hidden “reality.” Instead of astonishing us, the sped-up, even rushed pacing hiccups towards the end, as though the musical is running off its feet. Spivey also loses us when he rattles off an entire Tyler Perry–ish scene, playing all the parts, including the requisite “spirit-cha-alities” and contempt for gayness.
Helen_E_Shaw Oplus_TV