FranklinĪnd then there are his politically and religiously conservative Mom and Dad, forever yelling in his head about sin and hell and AIDS and beseeching him to write a nice gospel musical like Tyler Perry (or “Toxic Tyler Perry,” as Usher calls the mogul we’ll see more, much more, about Perry before Strange Loop calls it a day).įluidly directed by Stephen Brackett, with Raja Feather Kelly’s clever choreography punctuating Jackson’s delightfully brash score, A Strange Loop grabs hold of us the moment Usher concludes that funny introduction. One is the voice of Daily Self-Loathing, another the Supervisor of Sexual Ambivalence, an agent aptly named Fairweather, various hookup dates, and other internal monitors who tell him he’s not Black enough or gay enough or thin enough or has enough money. While Usher is, in a sense, the sole character of A Strange Loop (opening tonight at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre), Spivey is not the only performer: He is surrounded by those “extremely obnoxious Thoughts” that swirl through his brain, never giving him a moment’s peace.
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