Theatre review: A Strange Loop

A Strange Loop comes to the Barbican bearing a Pulitzer, but it's OK - once every few years they give it to something that isn't just the first thing to ham-fistedly tackle whatever the controversial hot topic of the day is. Michael R. Jackson's musical does make a point of the fact that intersectionality is something all the stage producers are looking to capitalise on at the moment, but at least it does it in as knowingly tongue-in-cheek a way as it does most other things. The intersection in question is that between black and queer lives, as seen through Usher (Kyle Ramar Freeman,) an usher at the Broadway production of The Lion King who's trying to write a musical in his spare time. The title has a couple of highbrow origin references but essentially it's about the structure: A musical about a gay black man writing a musical about a gay black man writing a musical about a gay black man.

The action mostly takes place inside Usher's head, which is why the rest of the cast (Sharlene Hector, Yeukayi Ushe, Tendai Humphrey Sitima, Danny Bailey, Eddie Elliott and understudy Momar Diagne) play his thoughts.

From the start we see how self-destructive these thoughts can be - he has a designated self-loathing thought of the day, but it's far from the only one that regularly attacks his confidence and identity. The thoughts also take on other figures in Usher's life, from casual hook-ups to, most crucially, his parents and family. But these are still versions of these people as seen and reconstructed by his mind - essentially this is stream-of-consciousness in musical form.

And there's something exhilarating about both the unpredictability of this and the honesty it leads to: A lot of theatre on both sides of the Atlantic has been bringing hard-hitting facts about the black experience into the mainstream, and A Strange Loop doesn't hold back on confrontational language and attitudes. But I don't think I was prepared for how boundary-pushing the gay content would be as well: Usher's sex life is limited by other gay men's prejudices about his colour and body shape, and when he occasionally does have sex his hang-ups take it to some very dark places.

But much of this is presented in hilariously filthy language, and there's definitely something as bizarrely empowering as it is shocking to having quite so many jokes about cum flying all over the place on Dame RSC's erstwhile London stage. It’s a no-holds-barred representation of either the most outrageously twisted fantasies that Jackson’s mind can throw up or, quite frankly, just what the tamer parts of the gay internet can be like on a good day. For the most part the show balances comic shock value with its more serious issues, and there’s a growing sense that as these are all Usher’s thoughts, we should treat them as an unreliable narrator (the fact that all six thoughts take turns playing the “real” characters helps them come across as variable and subject to how he views them at any given time, while there’s audible audience gasps at the revelation that one particular character is entirely a figment of his imagination.) While these rejections and debasements might be based on real-life incidents, the versions we’re seeing are self-inflicted on a daily basis.

And while the structure might be superficially chaotic, it’s all leading to acknowledging and confronting where this self-loathing comes from. It’s probably no surprise that it’s mostly about his parents, although the filmmaker and playwright Tyler Perry comes in for a lot of stick as well – not just for dominating black culture with one particular, lucrative but stereotypical interpretation of what that means, but for pushing a religious agenda that Usher associates with his mother being utterly unable to see his sexuality as anything other than a problem that needs curing. The show might be overwhelmingly a lot of fun but the bleaker moments hit hard.

Freeman provides the heart of Stephen Brackett’s production but the ensemble of thoughts brings the energy and complexity of the piece; visually the production’s relatively simple but does have a couple of coups de théâtre to keep things fresh, and I liked the way Arnulfo Maldonado’s set and Jen Schriever’s lighting move to make the space more or less expansive, hinting at the loops and spirals of the story. There’s a lot of tuneful songs, although despite Jackson castigating his alter ego early on for how white his artistic influences are, it’s still surprising to find the music so heavily influenced by Jonathan Larson (the climactic number is powerful, but also very reminiscent of “Come To Your Senses.”) But overall it all adds to the effect of a show that throws everything at the stage in a much more controlled way than it wants to appear. Variously ridiculously entertaining and powerfully intense, A Strange Loop is certainly strange, in all the right ways.

A Strange Loop by Michael R Jackson is booking until the 9th of September at the Barbican Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.