Usher is a complete, rich enough character to contain all of the worlds depicted on stage inside him. And in a musical that spells out exactly what emotional ingredients its hero is made of-like his daily self-loathing and sexual ambivalence-Spivey movingly absorbs each of them. Whether floating notes into his extraordinary head voice or belting satirical faux-gospel anthems, he provides a nuanced vocal performance that echoes Usher’s shifts from self-denigrating retrospection to bombastic showmanship.
As A Strange Loop progresses, Usher burrows himself ever deeper into his own unpredictable mind, and the more evident the show’s unstable structure, the more riveting it becomes.Īs Usher, Spivey is an endearing, tireless marvel. Each Thought also shows up in imagined conversations between Usher and his parents, his agent, and his would-be online hookups. Throughout, Stephen Brackett’s staging and Raja Feather Kelly’s choreography allow each performer to shimmer with individuality.
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These include Usher’s Daily Self-Loathing (James Jackson Jr.) and his Supervisor of Sexual Ambivalence (L Morgan Lee), plus a number of less printable manifestations of his internal infragility. Usher is the only real character here, as the rest of the ensemble, composed entirely of LGBTQ+ performers of color, play his Thoughts, who plague, praise, and prod him unceasingly. And, like Fairview, A Strange Loop deploys unfamiliar storytelling tools to amplify unfamiliar on-stage voices: To be heard, a Black, queer character like Usher needs to shatter the confidence of audiences that they know the rules of this musical theater game.
Jackson, who wrote the book, music, and lyrics, a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2020.Ī Strange Loop has less in common with the other musicals that have won that award this century- Hamilton and Next to Normal-than it does with the experimental, structurally challenging recipients, like the 2019 winner, Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview, which constantly disrupt and subvert audiences’ expectations for how stories are meant to be told. Not only did A Strange Loop sweep most of the New York theater awards for which it was eligible during its 2019 Off-Broadway run at Playwrights Horizons, but it also garnered Michael R. Usher is an usher at The Lion King on Broadway, and he spends every intermission-and most of his waking life-fantasizing about the show he’s trying to write called A Strange Loop, about a Black, queer usher and musical theater writer creating a show called A Strange Loop about a Black, queer usher and musical theater writer creating a show…and so forth.įew American musicals arrive on Broadway with as much acclaim as this one.
But I have rarely seen the idea of “sonder” rendered in art as explosively as in A Strange Loop, a musical that immerses its audience into the infinitely vivid and complex existence of its narrator and protagonist Usher (Jacquel Spivey), who both creates and is the show itself. Among the weird, wonderful concepts brought to lexicographical life in John Koenig’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is “sonder,” a term that describes “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” That definition, rooted in a sort of terrifyingly expansive empathy, has clung to me since I first read it.
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