Eddie Weaver as Usher in “A Strange Loop” at Actor’s Express. (All photos by Casey Gardner Ford)
The first Atlanta production of the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical A Strange Loop, onstage at Actor’s Express through August 31, is a marvelous feat of creativity from writer Michael R. Jackson, who followed the adage to “Write what you know.”
So Jackson, a former Broadway usher at The Lion King, wrote a musical about a 25-year-old usher at The Lion King — played here by Eddie Weaver — who wants to write an autobiographical musical but keeps getting interrupted by a chorus of his Thoughts, played by Aliciona Strothers, Clinton Harris, Chris McKnight, Jonathan Bryant, Barry Westmoreland and Javar La’Trail Parker.
It is a weird, metatextual and introspective loop of a premise. And this production, directed by Amanda Washington with music direction from John-Michael d’Haviland, is very good.
When you turn a mirror upon another mirror, it’s possible to explore yourself from infinite angles, but it’s impossible to get a full view of all you are. People are too complicated, idiosyncratic and complex for easy answers. A Strange Loop is about an individual attempting such an examination anyway, to see how best to tackle his life’s obstacles.
Every audience member who is game will be able to connect to some emotional component of this radical, often hilarious musical. Broadly, it is about human insecurity, loneliness and the near-impossible road to self-acceptance. It takes aspects of many great musicals that preceded it and builds inventively upon them to create something fresh and exciting for audiences.
But this show is also boldly and proudly for the specific communities that the author is part of, proclaiming in its opening number that it is a “Big, Black and Queer-Ass American Broadway Show.” A Strange Loop is not written “for” everyone. It is expressly about being a lisping, loathing, larger, Black, cisgender, queer American man and all of the warring multitudes he contains.
Running 100 minutes without intermission, we follow Usher from work to home as he tries to carve out his place in an artform and a society that too frequently excludes people like him or turns him into a caricature. We see him run up against the desires of his pious parents, the looming shadow of Tyler Perry, his inner white girl, his sexual needs, his religious trauma and his fear of AIDS. The script also dares to mention the problems a writer can encounter while trying to deliver a coherent message to a receptive audience.
It’s a fascinating, difficult and worthy work of art, brazen and confrontational at times. And it largely succeeds.
Weaver’s performance in the lead is searing and vulnerable, often heartbreaking. His vocals are beautiful. And he’s very funny in the scene where Usher plays every role in a wild parody of a gospel play.
All of the Thoughts performers are terrific, often sharing dozens of roles throughout, like versions of Usher’s parents — complete with quick costume changes, Atarius Armstrong’s fun choreography and constant scene entrances and exits.
One comic highlight involves them all portraying Black historical figures, confronting Usher about his ego in a song inexplicably called “Tyler Perry Writes Real Life.”
Washington’s direction keeps the show briskly paced, and the show’s clever blocking, set design from Seamus M. Bourne and lighting by Kevin Frazier move the focal point of the action constantly around the space without hiccup or confusion.
For fans of inventive theater, A Strange Loop should not be missed.
Where & When
A Strange Loop is at Actor’s Express through August 31. Tickets start around $46 with discounts available.
887 West Marietta St. NW, Ste. J-107
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Benjamin Carr is an ArtsATL editor-at-large who has contributed to the publication since 2019 and is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, the Dramatists Guild, the Atlanta Press Club and the Horror Writers Association. His writing has been featured in podcasts for iHeartMedia, onstage as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival and online in The Guardian. His debut novel, Impacted, was published by The Story Plant.
