A Strange Loop review: A musical within a musical that you can never second guess

Michael R Jackson’s acclaimed Broadway hit comes to the Barbican, and audiences don’t get an easy ride

The cast of ‘A Strange Loop' (Marc Brenner)

“Winner of every best musical award on Broadway,” scream the posters for A Strange Loop, so you might expect a musical aimed at the masses. But Michael R Jackson’s critically acclaimed production is not a show you can second guess. On the one hand, this is a “big, Black and queer-ass American Broadway show” as proclaimed in the opening number, all sparkling lights, jazz hands and a set reminiscent of Chicago’s sultry murder anthem “Cell Block Tango” (designed by Arnulfo Maldonado). On the other, it is both structurally and thematically knotty, exploring race dynamics, gay culture and class struggle, while also combining a sick humour with moments of poignancy. None of this is without design: A Strange Loop doesn’t give the audience an easy ride. There are periods when the show’s style threatens to drown out the story, but its emotional impact cannot be overstated.

A Strange Loop is a musical about a man writing about a man writing a musical – or “the portrait of a portrait of the artist as a young man”, as our hero (Kyle Ramar Freeman, who understudied the role on Broadway) puts it. He dreams of being a playwright while working as an usher at the Broadway production of The Lion King. Usher is his name too, the show’s action taking place in the short interval in that night’s show. It’s a framing device that pushes meta to the extreme; Usher points out the importance of an interval to make sure ticket holders don’t lose interest, but A Strange Loop sits at just under two hours. No interval.

Fortunately, there’s no chance of the Barbican audience getting bored. Keeping Usher company are his six “Thoughts” (Sharlene Hector, Nathan Armarkwei-Laryea, Yeukayi Ushe, Tendai Humphrey Sitima, Danny Bailey, Eddie Elliott), a chorus clad in dusky pink. Sometimes they inhabit the individual characters in Usher’s life, in other moments they morph into one communal character whose words are spread between them. In the upliftingly scored “We Wanna Know”, they become his god-fearing, gay-hating mother, asking seemingly innocent questions about his life, but with a hidden agenda.

The Thoughts also give voice to Usher’s inner turmoil, berating him about his body image, his Black identity, and the fact he’s not had sex in a year. Except their language is blunter, including repeated use of the N-word and explicit descriptions of “buttf***ing”. They set the tone for the rest of the show, which is unafraid to juxtapose shock, comedy and tragedy in both its extremes. Slurs are delivered with a smile, stereotypes crashing into each other at a staggering pace. Even in simpler moments, there’s still that contrast. The audience laughs when Usher sings about letting his “Inner White Girl” out, a coy look on Freeman’s face and purity to his voice, but the chorus’s refrain of: “White girls can do anything, can’t they? / Black boys must always obey their mothers” carries a stark reminder of the way social expectations differ according to race.

Kyle Ramar Freeman (centre) and the cast of ‘A Strange Loop' (Marc Brenner)

A Strange Loop’s desire to leave you wincing, yet unable to look away, comes to a head in one horrific moment. It’s a scene of graphic masochism – one that comes with both a trigger warning and the Thoughts, on stage, waving their rhinestone-gloved jazz hands. At times, the bombastic and studied musical theatre elements push the show from being just A Lot into overwhelming to the point of incomprehension. When such knowingly bold stylistic choices are mixed with big theatrical numbers, the story can get lost, and there are swathes of time in the middle when what’s happening is unclear.

That’s not to fault Jackson’s songs, which show a reverence for the musical theatre genre while also asserting their individuality. And, in a rarity for recent new musicals, I left with a head full of earworms – of course, when the catchy chorus you find yourself humming is about how “Aids is God’s Punishment” (an actual song title and repeated refrain in the show), the musical wrongfoots you again. Jackson wants us to sit in that sense of unease – and it’s an experience you won’t forget.

‘A Strange Loop’ is at the Barbican until 9 Sept