His parents are questioning the point of his expensive education. Like Jonathan Larson’s surrogate in “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” Usher is in a desperate quest to write an original musical that will rescue him from poverty, obscurity and a looming sense of failure. Usher’s name is also his job description: When we first meet him, he’s dressed in a red uniform and getting Broadway theatergoers into their seats for Act 2 of “The Lion King.” “A Strange Loop” kaleidoscopically captures the struggle of a young artist named Usher (Jaquel Spivey in a titanic performance) who, like Jackson, is a musical theater scribe with an NYU pedigree. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical that probes the inner reality of a 26-year-old Black, queer artist who’s trying against the odds to transform his alienation into art.įor much of this triumphant, emotionally lacerating show, which had its official opening Tuesday at the Lyceum Theatre, I sat with my mouth agape, astonished and grateful that something so brutally honest and rigorously constructed had finally broken through to a Broadway stage. I never thought I’d see anything on Broadway quite like “A Strange Loop,” Michael R.
