Jordan Markus as MJ, and the company of the First National Touring Company. Broadway Across Canada, photo by Matthew Murphy
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
MJ, the touring Broadway bio-musical that has arrived on the Jube stage, is a curiosity in every way. Like its star, and subject, Michael Jackson, arguably the 20th century’s greatest and most influential entertainer, a singer/dancer nonpareil, it’s complicated, contradictory, conflicted. It’s also amazingly light on its feet, and dazzling to behold.
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A jukebox musical, crammed with some of the biggest hits in pop music history in its song list of three dozen, MJ dances its way out of the circumscribed dimensions of that genre with an agile cast, choreography by director Christopher Wheeldon, a specialist in dance musicals — and in Jordan Markus a sensational star. He moves the Michael Jackson moves; he dances the Michael Jackson dance (in all its concave dipping, leg-forward glides, Fosse diagonals); he (moon)walks the walk. He captures the strangely wispy other-worldly figure with the breathy high whisper of a voice, who’s perpetually in motion at the centre of MJ.
Robert as MJ, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Matthew Murphy
A first-rate band of a dozen or so, conducted by Nathanael Wilkerson, is onstage too. And the sound quality, for once at the Jube, is just excellent (original sound designer Gareth Owen). So you’ll hear, and see, Thriller, Billie Jean, Bad, Man in the Mirror, in top form. In short, MJ has great music and great dancing going for it. And lots of both. And it’s on a grand theatrical scale: a stunning design (Derek McLane), brilliant lighting (designer: Natasha Katz), layers of Peter Nigrini’s gorgeous projections, a eyeful array of costumes by Paul Tazewell that re-create the performer’s famous wardrobe.
But here’s the thing. Since its existence depends on compliance with the Michael Jackson estate (“by special arrangement” as the program says), MJ is curatorial about the Michael Jackson story, alert to re-polishing a legacy tarnished by plausible allegations of child sexual abuse that started emerging immediately after the 1992 present time of the play.
It is a sympathetic portrait of the star. And, as many reviewers have pointed out since the musical’s 2022 Broadway debut, whether you can get past queasy accusations that are once known impossible to un-know, will have an impact on your experience of the show. The opening night audience loved the show, clamorously cheering the donning of the sparkly glove, the doffing of the signature hat.
Jordan Markus and Devin Bowles in MJ, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Matthew Murphy
In the libretto written by the celebrated playwright Lynn Nottage (Intimate Apparel, Ruined, Sweat), who’s won the Pulitzer Prize twice, Jackson is a prodigious talent traumatized by his past. And his present is infiltrated constantly by a harsh childhood of touring with his siblings in the Jackson 5, abused by a vicious stage father (Devin Bowles). In Nottage’s script there are three Michael Jacksons, the startling little boy (Quentin Blanton Jr.), the teenager who’s beginning to understand his own talent (the terrific Brandon Lee Harris), and MJ.
And along with his father and mother (the warm-voiced Ranané Katurah) his younger selves physically infiltrate the life of Jackson in the present, not only as flashbacks but also inhabiting other characters in MJ’s story of a brilliant performer haunted by ghosts. The double-casting of Wheeldon’s production is meaningful. The impact of Bowles as both the father and the tour manager, two contrastive authority figures, has particular weight.
MJ is nothing if not cleverly put together. Except, that is, for the inept framing device — crude, for such an accomplished playwright — of an MTV reporter (Kristin Stokes) who’s scored a rare interview with media-averse Jackson for a documentary. “I wanna keep this about my music,” he says. “But is it possible to separate your life from your music?” she asks.
There’s a question that weaves its way through MJ (and quite possibly all jukebox biomusicals). And his aggrieved response taps into a continuing theme that the tabloid media are predatory and the truth is beside the point. “No matter what I do it always get twisted….Just because you see it on a TV screen don’t make it factual.”
But the verbal exchanges with the reporter, as written, are oddly banal and dull, starting with gambits like “what drives you creatively?” or “when you perform it’s like a switch gets turned on….” Or this one: “It feels like you’re courting controversy.” Well, yeah. It’s one thing to allude to the shallow water in which the media swim, with Jackson as victim; it’s another to actually build those questions into the script.
Jordan Markus as MJ, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Matthew Murphy
So, Michael, where do you get your ideas? Yikes. It’s telling, not showing, to hear that “I process my ideas through my body.” And the showing, is well within the compass of Markus’s performance — the way life events and their emotional accretions seem to arrive in his movement lexicon, with its original angles, strange playfulness, tortured extensions. The Jackson 5 scenes, including an Amateur Night performance at the Apollo, are vividly realized onstage, and like past and present they flow wonderfully together in this production. If Jackson never seems quite grown-up or of this earth, it’s to the choreography and direction we look, not the thudding script.
The trickiest thing about MJ, bound to seem slippery, is that when Rachel, desperate as she claims to “get inside his his head” (ah, those crack MTV investigative reporters), frequently alludes to allegations and tabloid stories, she’s actually talking about his whitening skin colour and his enhanced nose, not the allegations and stories the musical knows we’re thinking about. It’s one thing to be (contractually) evasive; it’s another to drop hints in order to sidestep them.
The song lyrics themselves, in numbers astutely positioned in the musical, tell a story with reverb, too — Beat It, with its advice to avoid responsibility (“it doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong”), or Human Nature with its title as the answer to every why? question about human behavior.
The show begins at the outset in the rehearsal hall where Jackson’s corps of dancers are limbering up,“Five minutes to Michael!” Then “two minutes to Michael!” says the man in the suit. And after that, fanfare cum warning, there he is, the artist himself, sliding quietly into the rehearsal hall, right into Beat It. And we get to see a driven and demanding working pro, constantly tinkering, in detail (and expense), with the upcoming, maybe ruinously costly, Dangerous tour. There’s a delish scene where MJ dances with Fred Astaire and Bob Fosse, and the Cotton Club’s Nicholas Brothers.
That perfectionist, a true original whose music videos remain peak experiences of that form, is remarkable to see in action in MJ’s big, full-bodied production numbers in this fulsome touring show. The rest of the story unspools in clouds.
REVIEW
MJ
Broadway Across Canada
Book by: Lynn Nattage
Directed and choreographed by: Christopher Wheeldon
Starring: Jordan Markus, Devin Bowles, Kristin Stokes, Brandon Lee Harris, Quentin Blanton Jr. (alternating with Bryce A. Holmes), Michael Nero, Rajané Katurah, J. Daughtry, Austin Rankin
Where: Jubilee Auditorium
Running: through Sunday
Tickets: ticketmaster.ca
