Michael R. Jackson’s musical “A Strange Loop” premiered off-Broadway in 2019, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2020, opened on Broadway in 2022, and won that year’s Tony Awards for both best book of a musical and best musical.
With any other title of a similar pedigree, you’d have expected a national tour, an armada of regional productions and leading Chicago theaters fighting for the rights.
So why are we only now seeing the Chicago premiere of this most personal of musicals, and I don’t use that description lightly? And why in the off-Loop, at the Raven Theatre in a relatively low-budget (albeit Equity) endeavor, directed by Mikael Burke?
A fabulous, relatively low-budget production, let me assert, before you read any further. A production that, to my mind, better serves this material than the staging I saw on Broadway, not least due to the presence here of a superb actor and singer named Eddie Weaver in the pivotal lead role of Usher, a Black, gay musical-theater aspirant who is an usher at “The Lion King.”
But to return to that question, for those who don’t closely follow the world of new musicals, the explanation for the lag is that “A Strange Loop” is such a raw and honest piece of writing that, by authorial necessity, it delves into the specifics of the sexual fantasies and activities of said Usher.
That atypically edgy content for a Broadway musical is compounded by Jackson’s interest here in exploring the relationship between sex and power and, specifically, whether or not the sexual desires of the central authorial alter-ego (to have painful sex with dominant white men) are in fact a consequence of systemic racism getting all up in his head. These ideas were very much in vogue around 2020, back when identity politics were the dominant theme of American theater. (Jeremy O. Harris’ play “Daddy” explored similar ideas.)
All that said, “A Strange Loop” is also a very sweet show. It’s about as meta as meta can be, being a musical about a Black, gay man writing a musical about a Black, gay man writing a musical …. you get the idea. At one point, Usher observes that he wanted to write a show about what it feels like to be him, which is perhaps every show you ever see, but taken here to a whole new level.
More importantly, “A Strange Loop” is a gay artist’s cry to his parents to be loved and accepted, not just ’cause, but as his whole self, which means both sexually (as a gay man) and artistically (as a writer who is never going to work for Tyler Perry). It explores the consequences of systemic racism, but also the cultural conservatism and frequent homophobia of the Black community, which it implies shares that source with the self-destructive desires of Usher.
I should stipulate three things. One is that I talked quite extensively to Jackson when he was workshopping this show. He had a lot to say about white critics and Black work, especially what he described as the condescendingly rave review that does not engage and thus does not help the artist; that made me determined never to write such a review. The second is that I don’t naturally think in the terms of this show, which explores one’s deepest self entirely in terms of racial and sexual categorization. Third, my age naturally makes me more sympathetic to Usher’s parents, treated here entirely in terms of the needs and wishes of their less-than-happy child.
More Top Picks Best Kids Robot
So there is that. I also think that critics who see shows most every night are resistant to meta themes; they can feel tired to us while still fresh to audiences.
I have two more things to write.
One is how much better “A Strange Loop” works when not surrounded by the nomenclature of Broadway, where its very presence was a political statement, sure, but at the cost of the profoundly personal intimacy at the show’s core. In my first review, I thought Usher’s sweetly sung state of mind, always interesting, became overwhelmed by the show’s desire to parody Perry’s shows (Madea and such). That doesn’t apply in Burke’s simpler production because the designer Sydney Lynne understands the assignment of realizing an unrealized dream. Burke keeps the focus on Usher. None of that would work if Weaver’s portrayal wasn’t so empathetic, rendering the character yet more compelling and relatable than was the case on Broadway.
This is likely another sold-out, box office hit for Raven (working here in partnership with About Face Theatre) and its new artistic director, Jonathan Berry. It’s also further confirmation of Burke’s growing skills. The sound (designed by Hannah Kwa) is better than I typically find downtown, by the way, and both the music direction from Kyu Park and the singing of the supporting cast, all creatures inside Usher’s head, is far beyond what you could reasonably expect at this level of production and artist compensation. I hope Weaver, a Chicago newcomer, sticks around. What a talent.
If you’ve been curious about this title and can handle its sexual frankness, I doubt a comparable Equity production is coming your way here for a long time. This production delivers the full “Strange Loop” monty by foregrounding what Chicago theater does best.
This is not the only show about intersectionality, of course. But it is one of the few shows with the guts to spoof the privileged white progressives who embrace it at the same time as it asserts how racism and homophobia have done a number on creative young Americans.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
Review: “A Strange Loop” (4 stars)
When: Through Nov. 8
Where: Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark St.
Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Tickets: $30-$45 at 773-338-2177 and raventheatre.com