"A Strange Loop" changed history in many ways at this past weekend's Tony Awards ceremony — taking home awards for Best Musical and Best Book Of A Musical. The awards and accumulating accolades have proven that writer/composer Michael R. Jackson's dream of delivering a "Big Black Queer Ass American Broadway Show" to the masses is resonating with critics and audiences alike.
The musical follows troubled protagonist Usher, a 20-something overweight Black gay man, on his odyssey of embracing his identity and battling his demons. The latter are represented by six other cast members, a.k.a. the Thoughts, who personify his doubts, insecurities, and self-loathing. It's a meta-musical in which Usher, an NYU student and usher at "The Lion King," is working out and writing his autobiographical musical as the show is happening. He struggles with his dreams, with dating, and with parents who are supportive of his musical theater aspirations but unaccepting of his queerness.
The story integrates real details from Jackson's own life, but does not provide pat answers or saccharine Broadway sentiments. There are lines of raw, unfiltered dialogue that cut deeply into Usher's emotional core. The cast is also entirely made up of queer Black men, another Broadway first.
The musical — which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2020 — was nominated for 11 Tony Awards at this year's ceremony. As a recipient of the Best Musical award, co-producer Jennifer Hudson achieved the coveted EGOT dream, becoming only the 17th performer, second Black woman, and one of the youngest people ever to do so. Co-producer RuPaul won his first Tony as well, while cast members Jaquel Spivey (Usher) and L Morgan Lee (Thought 1, Usher's mother) received nominations.
Years before its 2019 off-Broadway run at Playwrights Horizons, Jackson first performed an incarnation of the piece in 2006 — a monologue called "Why I Can't Get Work," which gestated during his time at NYU in the early to mid-2000s. A Strange Loop transformed into a musical production, although it wasn't until Director Stephen Brackett came onboard in 2012 that they decided to cast all Black queer men.
Speaking to Thrillist, Jackson — an NYU grad who actually did usher at "The Lion King" for many years — broke down the eclectic influences for the show, including the animated series "Jem and the Holograms," various musicals, Tyler Perry films, and the "white chick" rock of Tori Amos and Liz Phair.
Perry's work is frequently made fun of in the show: Usher's mother would love for him to create a Tyler Perry-like show, and when he gets the chance to work on a Perry production, he turns it down. In real life, Jackson was so appalled at what he felt was the filmmaker's moralizing and poor handling of AIDS in Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor that he had to address it in his show. And he does so with a very intense gospel number about HIV that is a call for empathy that also taps into rage at both Usher's mother's and Perry's homophobia (something the filmmaker has frequently been accused of).
Liz Phair's music and lyrics had a profound influence on Jackson. "I just was so into her songwriting style and the humor," Jackson told Thrillist. "There's a poetry to it that's just so striking and beautiful, in addition to just doing what I call character work. The characters of herself or whomever in her songs were just so interesting and intricate." In fact, Phair has a song called "Strange Loop," which is also a concept by Pulitzer-winning author and computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter.
Jackson's initial monologue was inspired by Phair's "stream-of-consciousness style and speaking baldly with no filter," he said. "But then there's also Tori Amos, who's like my origin, inner white girl. With somebody who, similarly but even in a sort of rawer way, just would lay everything bare." (Usher frequently references his "inner white girl" on stage.)
Musical Director Rona Siddiqui — a composer and musician with a musical inspired by her mixed Afghan and Italian heritage in the works — has been with the show since 2018. A fellow NYU grad, Siddiqui connected musically with Jackson on Phair, Amos and '90s R&B.
"We have the same kind of understanding of groove, so that makes this very joyful for me to be a part of," Siddiqui tells GRAMMY.com. "When I decide what I'm going to music direct, I have to say to myself, 'Are these people I want to be in the room with? Can I learn from them? Do I want to be influenced by this?' Because you have to submerge yourself into the music. You have to go all the way in."
While its Broadway run has been overwhelmingly embraced, Siddiqui recalled the trepidation she felt ahead of their first audience off-Broadway: "I was like, 'Are people just gonna walk out?'
"The fact that it's been so well received just speaks to how thirsty we are for stories that are honest. And characters that are complex and vulnerable. I think that's why it resonates across the board," she posits. "It's so great to see fat, Black, queer people represented in a space that they are usually excluded from. But it's the universality of that vulnerability and that need for connection and acceptance that we all have that makes every single person feel what Usher is going through."
The show's sound designer Drew Levy echoes those sentiments. "Obviously, I'm not any of the things that Usher is or what the show is about," says Levy who is straight, white and slender. "But I think the beauty of Michael R. Jackson's play is that it is so true that you don't have to be those things to see it and feel it."
As musical director and keyboardist for "A Strange Loop," Siddiqui conducts the show every night. She says her mission is to actualize Michael R. Jackson's musical vision and enhance it as best she can.
"I get as deep into his psyche as possible to bring the music out in ways that even he doesn't know how to say," explains Siddiqui. "That starts with teaching the actors the music, and that gets down to the minutiae of phrasing, and how we pronounce certain words and why…. Every single decision is dramaturgically based and very, very clear" and explained to the band, as well.
When asked if Jackson has learned anything from her, she replies, "Michael always says he knows his musical knowledge ends at a certain point, and that's where I pick up the ball for him." She recollects that while they were mixing the original Broadway cast album, she was the one making the most notes and ones that "Michael wasn't even catching…now I am the one that knows it the most. And that is a trip to me….There's a point where he just trusts me so much that I take the ball."
"A Strange Loop" has upended conventional notions of a mainstream musical, and breaks ground with its frank sexual language — which means it will likely be a hard sell to the tourist crowd. "You cannot bring your kids. So we're not going to have the 'Six' or the 'Wicked' longevity, unfortunately," says Siddiqui.
That being said, there are many teenagers and young adults who are coming to terms with their identity and feeling the way that Usher does, and that could inspire an audience that passes the show along to future generations in a different way.
"I hear from those young people sometimes, and it just makes me so happy that they're seeing themselves and feeling seen," says Siddiqui. "It makes me really, really happy."
The show’s subject matter, frankness and deeper introspection will likely be “A Strange Loop”’s strongest legacy. It’s not a safe mainstream musical, but it is a safe space for its audience even as it challenges both its protagonist and theatergoers to always keep growing despite life’s constant challenges.
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