A Strange Loop (Broadway)
A review of A Strange Loop on Broadway.
A Strange Loop was something that I was yearning to see for the longest while. I took a trip up to New York City in June 2022 and felt an instant regret that I had purchased Dear Evan Hansen tickets over ASL at the time, and a Hamlet ticket, but I don’t regret that decision looking back in hindsight.
DEH is closing soon and I feel that the tickets are a lot less affordable and easy to get compared to June, especially because the Stranger Things kid has joined the cast, and I did actually like DEH despite the massive hate that it gets. One day I’ll get around to writing an essay about that. Anyways, DEH was on TDF all the time when I went up originally and now it’s not.
ASL was something I knew a little about, since I listened to a couple of the songs and knew the basic premise to an extent where I felt comfortable knowing that I’d like this kind of piece. I could never go into a show blind because I’d be afraid of wasting my money, especially if it’s a pricy Broadway show.
I purchased a partial view balcony seat right in the center (I think it was 106) and, to be honest, those seats were not as bad as some people make them out to be. If you ask the usher for a cushion or you’re tall enough to lean over the cameras, I found the angle and proximity to the stage to be really, really nice. I liked that seat a lot and I feel like I didn’t miss anything. For $49 before fees, it felt like a steal.
Onwards with the review!
A Black, queer playwright named Usher grapples with his thoughts and self-doubts.
Before I dive deeper into this review, it’s important to note that I attended a Sunday matinee of this performance. Jaquel Spivey will not be doing matinees the vast majority of the time, so the Usher I saw was Kyle Ramar Freeman. Thought 4 was also an understudy: Jon-Michael Reese.
Kyle especially blew me away because I knew nothing about the Usher understudies, but I can understand that the role of Usher is extremely difficult because of the amount of vulnerability involved. There is a big reason that this won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award.
The basic premise of A Strange Loop is that it is about a young gay Black man named Usher who is a writer and usher for the Lion King on Broadway. He’s barely making it and surviving out in the world, and he’s looking for a break to make it as a writer.
He wants to write a play true to his experiences as a Black gay boy growing up in a religious family, so his current project is about a Broadway usher, also named Usher, who’s writing a play about a Broadway Usher who’s writing a play about a Broadway usher, and etc. That’s part of the strange loop that the title mentions, as Usher is literally trapped in a spiral of self-doubt.
This manifests as his five thoughts, who take the stage around him and play the other characters. They come on stage dressed as his mother and father, who confront Usher for not being religious and for being a gay man who left the community.
They’re a white man from Inwood who, as Usher tries to seek out sexual liberation and get laid for the first time in forever, calls him slurs and has evident racial problems. They’re his doctor, telling him to get laid and be free, and the agent that calls him up to ghostwrite a Tyler Perry play. There’s a common theme throughout that Usher doesn’t want to be like Tyler Perry because his mother sees Perry plays and movies as the example of the Black experience filtered through religion.
There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to A Strange Loop, but it does an incredible job of balancing the humorous elements along with the heavier content. The first arc—there is no intermission for this show, by the way—has a lot of jokes and comedic timing with some of the dialogue, and the audience was absolutely cracking up throughout. But as the show hurtles deeper into Usher’s head and his anxieties, it gets really dark.
We have to confront the racial reality that he experiences in his everyday life, as well as the trauma of his childhood. His father drinks a lot, while his mother just nags on him for not believing in Jesus Christ. Usher went to NYU and has been out of school for awhile, so he comes across as a deadbeat to the people in his life that he tried to escape from.
He eventually does confront them in his mind by writing a gospel play—but the musical does end on an uncertain, but hopeful note as Usher realizes what the thread keeping his story authentic is.
Performance-wise, each and every cast member is incredible. It is no wonder that a chunk of them landed Tony nominations for their roles, and I’m surprised every single one of them didn’t get some kind of nod by the awards. Sure they won Best Musical, but this show can be summarized as an organized cacophony.
I think because I was familiar with some of the songs I was able to root through the chaos a bit easier, but someone coming into this completely blind might find it a mess when it comes to the sound. I found that part to be critical to the show, however, because sometimes people truly do get lost in their thoughts and they can feel deafening when you’re down like Usher is.
With a minimalist set, there’s a lot that can be done with the actors themselves, and because they play multiple characters, they nail down an overarching framework that is true to theater as a medium.
Overall Thoughts
I can see why people do not like A Strange Loop. I liked it coming into it, but I did not love it. I think it’s because I can very much appreciate it as a piece of theater that represents a demographic I myself am a part of, and that I can acknowledge that this was a very good medium and transactional mode of storytelling.
Each and every song really propels the plot even further, developing the character of Usher and the people in his life. He’s really spiralling and struggling, which comes across on the stage pretty well. It’s not an optimistic play with a clear resolution, but it is a critical one indeed.
Go see it if you have the bandwith and financial resources to do so.
