Want to increase your chance of success in the theater? You have two choices. You can follow the rules—base your show on something that was a hit in another medium; offer a familiar plot, music, characters, even all of the above.
Or you can break the rules by offering something unlike any previous hits, something unfamiliar and even shocking, guaranteed to drop jaws and inspire a few walkouts from the offended. Of course, even rule-breakers need to abide by some rules. At least one compelling character. If there’s music, make it good. Include humor to temper the provocation.
Michael R. Jackson’s sometimes hilarious and always searing A Strange Loop, now running at the Ahmanson, follows all the rules about breaking rules—which somehow feels appropriate, given its circular and self-referential theme. The main character is a queer Black theater usher known only as Usher, whose secret dream is to write a musical about a queer Black writer writing a musical about a…well, you get it.
Usher is not a familiar musical character. He’s not a demon barber or a drag performer with a straight son, a conman theatrical producer or a bachelor whose friends want to him set up with a nice girl, a pregnant cabaret singer or a compulsive pointillist painter—all roles in previous rule-breakers. He’s under-employed, lonely and self-loathing. He’s surrounded by personified thoughts, like a much more adult version of Inside Out. And he is awesome, especially as played in this run by Malachi McCaskill.
Usher is working The Lion King. Although the job is not fulfilling, it colors his perception of his world. He refers to his parents as Mufasa and Sarabi even though, spoiler alert, their parallels to those loving lion royals are limited.
At the beginning of A Strange Loop, Usher vows “to change my whole life forever.” His Thoughts (Jordan Barbour, J. Cameron Barnett, Carlis Shane Clark, Avionce Holes, Tarra Conner Jones and John-Andrew Morrison) react, providing commentary on his good qualities and shortcomings. Trapped inside his own head with a lot of company, Usher seeks to “edit every imperfection.”
Of course, good intentions will only take you so far, and Usher continues to disappoint himself, sometimes in graphic ways. As he confronts his entrenched habits and troubled relationships and fails to change them, he grows more despairing of his lack of boundaries and inability to change his behavior. Has he hit rock bottom? Will he write that musical? Or are we already watching it?
Usher’s Thoughts frequently stand in a set of doorways behind Usher that resemble funhouse mirrors—and indeed, they alter his perception of himself, pulling him in multiple directions. When not playing Thoughts, they are the show’s other characters. Morrison, Barnett and Jones are acting and vocal standouts, but all the Thoughts operate at the highest level.
Director Stephen Brackett guides the show through times quiet and chaotic, through scenes that raise the bar on what a musical can be. Similarly, scenic designer Arnulfo Maldonado takes sets from simple to lush, in a complex staging that beautifully mirrors what’s going on inside Usher.
His mother’s desire for a gospel musical and a series of disses against Tyler Perry places Usher and his artistic aspirations in the context of Black culture and adds to his self-inflicted pressures. Ultimately A Strange Loop is about striving and achieving, defining success and happiness on one’s own terms, and living without shame and judgment—especially from oneself.
The term “a strange loop” has its roots in the science of self-perception. We are all, to varying degrees, conscious of ourselves as individuals with strengths and failings—not necessarily in that order. This Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning Strange Loop is a triumph of mind over mind over mind.
A Strange Loop runs through June 30 at the Ahmanson at the Music Center downtown. Show times are Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8:00 pm, Saturdays at 2:00 pm, and Sundays at 1:00 pm and 6:30 pm. Tickets are $35 and up and can be purchased here. Wednesday and Thursday performances have “dinner and a show” options, with dinner at Abernethy’s on the Music Center plaza at 5:30. There is also a Juneteenth talkback, on June 19.
