The Toronto Theatre Review: A Strange Loop
By Ross
“If you’re not scared…then it’s probably not worth it.” Truer words could not have been spoken, as this show isn’t your typical Broadway-esque musical. Taking over the whole space in verbal chaos, the “what’s next” question pushes and prods us to look without self-loathing through the looking glass into some other part of our collective soul, thinking, “white girls can do anything, can’t they?“ This is A Strange Loop, recipient of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and numerous other awards, written in a hilarious, confrontational manner by playwright Michael R. Jackson (Playwrights Horizons’ Teeth), finding his own very unique ushering way onto the stage. “He wants to show what it’s like to live up here and travel the world in a fat, Black, queer body,” this time at Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre, thanks to the collaboration of four different companies: The Musical Stage Company, Crow’s Theatre, Soulpepper and TO Live, whirling around intersectionality in a most detailed and delightfully dark loop. It’s deliciously dreamy and desirous, ushering in ideas and complications that probably will throw a few patrons off their comfy little theatre seats into the aisles. But they better beware, as those pathways are busy and overrun with thoughts determined to interfere and inspire.
This insanely brave and talented writer, credited most brilliantly and deservedly with the book, music, and lyrics, finds a true, authentic space to call his own in this wildly successful attempt to unwrap himself fully inside and out of the musical norm. He’s out in force, in a big, solid way, to pull apart the properties of our self-referential systems that live firmly and freely within the modern world in a theatrically grappling manner that is pure, unadulterated pleasure and pain in the sexual marketplace. Attempting to unshackle himself from familial bondage and denial, A Strange Loop unpacks organic and navigational conflicts dynamically, as we meet the complex usher named Usher, and watch him dream of a day when he isn’t working front-of-house at Disney’s The Lion King musical, but writing his own musical about a angsty gay black man writing a musical. In a loop of fascinatingly endless depth and dimension.
A Strange Loop is a Russian doll dissection of sorts, peeling away and peering into the unique layers of our psyche in hopes of finding a sympathetic ear. It’s a self-referential concept that grew steadfast out of Jackson’s own Liz Phair musical narrative that, luckily for us, is embedded in the elaborate construct deep inside his head. On closer examination (thanks to some reading I did from the 2019 Playwrights Horizons handbook), it really is formulated out of a much deeper abstract framework pulled from Douglas Hofstadter’s complex book, ‘I Am a Strange Loop‘, in which the author tries to expound and understand the central thematic message of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and paradigms that famously center around self-reference and the examination of the stratums of the mind. Got it?
In the end, we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference. — Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop p.363
Let’s walk on through this together and try to make some sense of it. “Why does it need to be?” Jackson asks, and like Hofstadter, Jackson has taken this convoluted construct and mixed in a bit of W.E.B. DuBois with a quote about “double consciousness”. Du Bois, it seems, describes “double consciousness” as “a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity“. With those sophisticated, heady ideas floating around his wickedly smart noggin, Jackson found his footing and formulated his own exploration of life, and those that swim around him, including his family, his society, Tyler Perry, and his own gang of internalized thoughts, whether they be cruel or compassionate.
It is a mind/body slam in the most humorous and complex way and as directed with crafty ingenuity by Ray Hogg (Rainbow Stage’s Little Shop of Horrors) and choreographed in rounding fashion by the fantastic Rodney Diverlus (Soulpepper’s The Guide to Being Fabulous), the thrills of that first number sent me into joyous giggles of delight once again. And it just kept getting deeper and smarter, wittier and wiser, with each effervescent and boundary-free song and floating mirrored reflections of self and all those eyes of others. The show is like no other, constructed safely in a style that feels familiar yet not at all. It’s like taking a sweet-sharp onion and peeling away the layers until we get to another one, deep inside, that also needs its own peeling. It may bring tears to your eyes simply out of the pleasure or the pain before you, but the paradigm perfection of the unit is solid in the growing, and as complex and flavorful as anything one can imagine. So, how do you like those apples, my enthusiastic Soulpepper audience? It seems you do, from the reaction A Strange Loop had the other night.
Malachi McCaskill (NC Theatre’s Elf The Musical) as the central figure, Usher, is a three-pronged stab into our funny bone, making us laugh, smile, and wince, especially when he coaxes us to feel the sting of all the different aspects of his loops and his name. His voice is full of raw truth and the clarity of emotion, while never sounding typical or just plain lovely. Sometimes it feels forced or fragile, but it is his unapologetic story that unfolds before our wide eyes, tinted with tones of Rent and Sondheim, that unwraps in the company of his wild and inappropriately appropriate six personified thoughts, each one a gold mine in their delightful descent down the aisel and the rabbit hole of his mind. They are portrayed with finesse and fun by a band of well formed ideals, embodied by the spirited crew that includes: Sierra Holder (Theatre Calgary’s Beaches) as Thought 1; Nathanael Judah (Shaw’s Gypsy) as thought 5; Marcus Nance (Stratford’s Frankenstein Revived) as Thought 6; Matt Nethersole (Shaw’s Brigadoon) as Thought 3; David Andrew Reid (Stratford’s La Cage aux Folles) as Thought 4; and Amaka Umeh (Soulpepper’s Three Sisters) as Thought 2; with each giving us a tightly nuanced slice of their particular corner of the negative core belief structure, even when they might be playing up the formulation with a bit too strong of a snap.
Playing an assortment of characters, the six conjure up from the dark recesses of his mind Usher’s fear, internalized homophobia, and utter self-hatred, coated and primed for maximum impact. Spinning forward with each perfectly articulated line, song, and passing comment, the stings are born out of the consequences of being faced with an imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy that’s constantly policing self-expression and self-love, while being destroyed and assisted by “the white Gay-triarchy.“ A Strange Loop smashes down from the inside by a family that both loves their son, yet makes it clear he is doomed, destined to pay the consequences of living a life of a big black queer person, forever making his momma not proud. Let’s all sway and clap along to that particular gospel song, shall we? (I’ll tell you now, it’s not the most comfortable thing to do.)
There are times we don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or clap along to the sounds of this collision of hurt and humor, as the players bring forth an authentic slap to each well-crafted line and song. There is a strong earthbound bleeding heart to their slap, as the six neatly emerge from the mirrored walls created with strong mindful attention to compartmentalization by scenic designer Brian Dudkiewicz (The Grand’s Titanic), with solid smart costuming by Ming Wong (Crow’s Rosmersholm), dynamic sharp lighting by Michelle Ramsay (Shaw’s Snow in Midsummer) and a somewhat difficult sound design by Brian Kenny (The Musical Stage Co’s Kelly V. Kelly) that didn’t really help us follow along as well as we wanted to. The language and the dilemma of disparate experiences of the mind and heart fly out with delight, with phrases and dialogue that one wouldn’t expect inside any big-time musical. Yet, we are shocked and thankful that they have found their place to be said, sung, and heard with such conviction. With strong music direction by Chris Tsujiuchi (Talk is Free/Winter Garden’s Into the Woods), this A Strange Loop strikes the dissonance with delightful directive-ness granting such power to the ideals within that one of the thoughts that emerges, spoken with disdain by one of the “Guardians of Musical Theater” hits it perfectly on the preverbal head, uttering the unconventional rebuttal to Usher’s freedom, “You can’t say ‘N’. There are white people watching…. There are black people watching.”
It’s clear that Jackson has done just that, found the exacting power in his unconventional yet completely proper and determined musical. It’s a self-referential strange loop in and of itself, where the rebellious white rocker women, Liz Phair, Tori Amos, and Joni Mitchell, who live sneakily inside the soul of Usher, rise up and really let us have it. It expands the notion of black identity in all its complexity, dreaming of a space where a black queer man might not have to face the consequences of letting everyone know just what is going on inside his angry hurt heart. Yet, somehow, he manages to find the power to stand up alongside his thoughts with a shared common language of truth, writing the gospel musical finale that his mother wanted, but didn’t. The piece is a very powerful construct that draws a line in the sand and asks us to join with him in the difficult jump across. Trust me when I say, you’ll want, most definitely, to join in, grasping him and everyone involved by the hand in that giant leap of faith across the divide, cheering them on until the loop, A Strange Loop, begins again next showtime.
