REVIEW: SpeakEasy Stage Company and Front Porch Arts Collective’s introspective ‘A Strange Loop’ clever from the start
A Strange Loop’ is quite the existential crisis in one serious brainstorm.
Usher dreams of becoming a musical theatre writer. In hopes of brighter prospects, Usher works as an usher on Broadway for Disney’s The Lion King musical but feels stuck. Stuck in a pattern and flooded with self loathing and self defeatist thoughts over the pressure to be brilliant and accepted, Usher needs to overcome a great deal in order to create something great.
With Maurice Emmanuel Parent’s versatile direction and David Freeman Coleman’s complex music direction with expeditious choreography by Taavon Gamble, SpeakEasy Stage Company in co-production with Front Porch Arts Collective continues Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony award-winning dark musical comedy satire A Strange Loop though Saturday, May 25 live and in person at Calderwood Pavilion in Boston, Massachusetts. This unique and multifaceted production has explicit language, adult themes, and runs 100 minutes with no intermission. Click here for more information and for tickets.
To say this production is multi-layered is an understatement. It focuses on a queer black writer writing a musical about a queer black writer writing a musical about a queer black writer. Usher, in a vivid, poignant and moving portrayal sung beautifully by Kai Clifton, is not only dealing with writer’s block but is overwhelmed by unpredictable, wild, unhinged, uninhibited, and punishing thoughts and it doesn’t take long to realize how brutal and undeserving these thoughts are for Usher’s wellbeing. Kai Clifton’s Usher is reserved, shy, and nonconfrontational on the outside, but suffers from inner turmoil and loneliness. Usher’s perspective of reality is a landscape of discouragement and the desire to be someone else, but also the desire to be free to be accepted for who Usher really is.
These frenzied thoughts, composed of Grant Evan, Davron S. Monroe, Jonathan Melo, Aaron Michael Ray, De’Lon Grant, and Zion Middleton, are compartmentalized cleverly into black stage lit cubes by John Savage and lighting designer Brian J. Lillienthal which act as a compelling metaphor for one’s tendency to compartmentalize inner thoughts and feelings. With powerful vocals and animated velocity, these actors master the gravity of quick changes in mood, personality, and roles seamlessly and with precision.
Some of the individual thoughts pop into multiple roles in Usher’s perception of reality as well. In the comically guilt-ridden number, We Wanna Know, the cast wears identical housedresses and represents Usher’s pushy, religious and gossipy mother in various ways. Clifton lets loose with Inner White Girl before taking a darker turn with the evasive yet telling Didn’t Want Nothing reflecting Usher’s strained relationship with Usher’s father.
The loops in this production are not restricted to Usher’s thoughts but exist in circular conversations with parents, critics and others that have their own ideas of what Usher should write about and what they are comfortable with and if this production is being done right, the audience is anything but comfortable. It also explores the psychological and frustrating journey of a writer and the pressure to write what is popular or safe rather than writing from the heart. The notably well staged and satirical numbers Tyler Perry Writes Real Life and Writing a Gospel Play are both powerful, humorous and delve into some of these themes.
A Strange Loop runs the gamut of raw emotions including fear and painful regret in the conflicted and sympathetic number Boundaries, gripping Memory Song, and the stirring title track. It is humorous, but is also a harsh, shocking and challenging production. Michael R. Jackson has noted that this Pulitzer prize-winning production is fiction, but perhaps emotionally autobiographical in its musical theatre style collection of original, evocative, and thought provoking songs that drives the show to its striking conclusion.
With Maurice Emmanuel Parent’s versatile direction and David Freeman Coleman’s complex music direction with expeditious choreography by Taavon Gamble, SpeakEasy Stage Company in co-production with Front Porch Arts Collective continues Michael R. Jackson’s dark musical comedy satire A Strange Loop though Saturday, May 25 live and in person at Calderwood Pavilion in Boston, Massachusetts. This distinctive and multifaceted production has explicit language, adult themes, and runs 100 minutes with no intermission. Click here for more information and for tickets.
