Review: A STRANGE LOOP, Barbican Theatre

Hot off Broadway with a Best Musical Tony and a Pulitzer Prize for its script, Michael R Jackson’s A Strange Loop comes to London for a summer run at The Barbican.

Its basic premise is simple: a Black, fat, gay man (Kyle Ramar Freeman) is writing a show about a Black, fat, gay man writing a show about…You get the picture. If that sounds a tad meta, that’s because it is but Jackson (who wrote the book, music and lyrics) has all kinds of highly adult fun picking apart the intrinsic challenges his central character Usher faces.

Those challenges come in two flavours. His inner demons, played by six Thoughts (Sharlene Hector, Nathan Armarkwei-Laryea, Tendai Humphrey Sitima, Danny Bailey, Eddie Elliott and Yeukayi Ushe) represent his negative emotions from self-loathing to his sexual frustrations and mixed feelings towards his own Blackness. Outwardly, he is frustrated by his dead-end job sucking up to tourists as an usher at Disney’s The Lion King, Bible-loving parents who despair of his homosexuality and fear he will catch AIDS and an agent pushing him hard into writing the kind of Tyler Perry gospel show that he despises but his mother would love him to create.

Despite its breezy and bouncy tunes with more than a hint of Sondheim and Tori Amos, A Strange Loop doesn’t wear its identity politics aspects lightly. Like a latter-day Lenny Bruce, Usher sprays the N-word around like droplets from a waterlogged dog, as well as an endless series of pejoratives for gay men and gay sex. Jackson doesn’t pull any punches in his sparky interrogation of how people of colour are represented to white society by the likes of Perry and the racist nature of the gay dating scene. Especially in the first half, we see how the oppressive barrage facing Usher is little short of brutal at times with his responses refreshingly pointed.

Many of the references to various Stateside personages (including Perry plus Scott Rubin, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Huston and Harriet Tubman) may fly over the heads of non-Americans in the audience but the main points hit home hard and heavy as we progress through this “big, black and queer-ass American Broadway show”.

Amid the tales of “white sh*t and black sh*t and butt-f*cking”, there are also some fun allusions to Usher being an unreliable narrator. In a scene reminiscent of Mr Robot, an intriguing stranger Usher connects with on a subway ride is revealed to be a figment of his own imagination; in the song “Tyler Perry Writes Real Life”, Usher is haunted Scrooge-like by the motley crew of Baldwin, Neale Huston, Tubman, “12 Years A Slave” and Whitney Houston. A strange loop, indeed.

The set is wonderfully lit up thanks to Arnulfo Maldonado’s bright design and the choreography from Raja Feather Kelly is punchy and charming in equal measure. A final reveal sees our Usher reveal to his mother what her dream of a Perry-style gospel show would really look like if her son wrote it: a massive crucifix is lit up in alongside “HIV”, both in blazing neon red, while Usher’s preacher character spells out the AIDS is “God’s punishment”. Its an unexpected and glorious twist which leans heavily on what has gone before.

Stephen Brackett’s direction is sensational, pushing forward the plot at enough pace to explore Usher’s issues while still keeping our attention glued to the stage for most of the proceedings. The opening numbers like Intermission and “Inner White Girl” are full of razor-sharp lyrics and humorous insights which make the closing numbers a tad ordinary in comparison.

There’s a noticeable lull towards the end, not helped by a couple of songs which mainly seem to be there to amplify and summarise what has already been amply explored. The anticlimactic finale which brings Usher full circle is more realistic than satisfying: loops gotta loop but where does that leave us, the audience? Has our protoganist really moved any closer to his life goals? Has the snake eaten its tail like an ouroboros or shed its skin and moved forward? Something to ponder on the way home.

A Strange Loop continues at the Barbican Theatre until 9 September.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

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