The Thoughts are six characters who express his internal monologue as he progresses through life and the show. He’s writing a musical, A Strange Loop, to show the world what it’s like to “travel the world in a fat, Black, queer body”. Usher is the play’s hero, an usher at The Lion King on Broadway, as Jackson once was. ‘He doesn’t care about offending’ … Jackson accepts his Tony in 2022. I’m interested in lots of points of view coming into the theatre and meeting Usher and his Thoughts.” “When I think about diversity, I’m not just talking about skin colour or gender or sexual orientation. “There are lots of Black cultural reference points you may not get off the bat,” he adds, “but you’ll learn as you go.” Jackson is sceptical of the “black out” nights at some theatres, intended for Black audiences only: he enjoys the multiple interpretations a diverse crowd can bring. But even if you’re not familiar with his work, Jackson says, you will still enjoy A Strange Loop.
In the UK, Perry is most famous for loaning his mansion to Harry and Meghan when they swapped Frogmore Cottage for Beverly Hills.
Opening a Pret a Manger bag and extracting a croissant, Jackson coolly explains: “I think I got under his skin.” Even Tyler Perry – the screen mogul whose schlocky output is mercilessly roasted in A Strange Loop – keeps calling. His parents, who regarded homosexuality as a sin almost on a par with murder, have seen the show three timesĪfter almost two decades of failing to get his theatrical career off the ground – part of the subject of his gloriously self-reflexive show – Jackson is now a theatrical heavyweight, his status recently cemented by a major profile by Hilton Als in the New Yorker. Alan Cumming was so impressed he invested money in it, and says of Jackson: “It takes such balls to be so vulnerable and to say, ‘This is my story, I’m writing about what I think, and some of it’s not very nice, some of it’s ugly.’ He doesn’t care about offending or not looking good and ultimately it makes it all the better.” In the US, it couldn’t have been more highly praised: it won the Pulitzer prize for drama in 2020, then transferred to Broadway in 2022 where it picked up two Tonys, including best musical. This month, we’ll see whether his show, A Strange Loop, manages to bridge the cultural divide. Like taking tea twice a day during rehearsal – we don’t do that in the US. “The first time I got to England,” he says, “I was like, ‘Oh right, I’m American.’ It’s a totally different culture.
It’s a concept foreign to the musical’s writer, Michael R Jackson. I n the bowels of the brutalist Barbican, the young cast of A Strange Loop are having a tea break.
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