So Spotify Wrapped reminded me that I saw the San Francisco production of A Strange Loop this year, and listening to the soundtrack now I’m reminded just how damn good that show was. I really hope there’s another staging of it sometime, or the release of a video recording if one exists. (Or even a decent bootleg, I’ll take anything 😭)
The staging was beautiful, just an excellent example of what you can do with minimalism and lighting. And the ensemble cast was phenomenal - they sound amazing together in every production I’ve heard, and the concept of each of the cast being “thoughts” who trade parts around would potentially be a hard sell in another production, but here it feels seamless. I’m really impressed that it was able to take such a nerdy, high-concept and pretentious story structure and make it feel so accessible. Excellent writing and acting all around. “Entertainment as undercover art” indeed. The Usher we saw (Malachi McCaskill) was also exceptional and gave an incredible performance.
I think A Strange Loop is a great example of how much you can do by increasing specificity in artistic representations of identity. Creators seem to often be pressured to make identity-focused stories as broadly appealing as possible, making it so that their (for example) queer characters are everymen who just happen to be queer. And of course that usually means your “everyman” has to be a white cis able-bodied guy who is overall readable as “straight” unless you happen to know his orientation. And if he isn’t that, he’s as close to it as we can possibly get him.
By making a “Big Black and Queer-ass American Broadway show” about a fat gay black man trying to make it on the NYC theater scene, I think you actually create so many more opportunities in which an audience can relate to the protagonist’s experience. You don’t have to be a fat gay black man to relate with feelings of inadequacy, or struggling to make it in your professional field, or feeling too ugly to have a good sex life, or having a complicated relationship with your parents. Even if you don’t fully fall into the category of “fat gay black man,” it’s likely that you might identify with at least part of that experience, and you can exercise your imagination and empathy to engage with the rest. In comparison, I think a lot of us struggle to relate to a bland, filed down “everyman” character, despite the fact that he’s meant to be more “broadly appealing.”
A Strange Loop is unapologetically about blackness, and specifically the experience of a queer black person who sometimes struggles to relate with wider black culture. I am as white as wonder bread, and I was prepared to not directly relate with aspects of this musical, but I knew I’d still probably be able to enjoy it because, yaknow, it’s not actually that hard to understand media about experiences that don’t match your own. 🤷
But I found myself relating to the story way more than I expected. The details don’t fully align, but I too have had to navigate the world as a fat queer person unable to feel true “pride” about myself. I too have a strained relationship with conservative parents who are “loving” but deeply toxic and painful to speak with. I too feel the weight of capitalism crushing down on me, wanting to find “success” in this hellhole of a world but knowing I’d have to compromise my values in order to do so. I am not very similar to Usher on the face of it, but because his story focuses so much on the multiple specific experiences he has in this world, it’s actually way easier for me to find common ground with him than if there was just nothing there.
And while I can’t relate directly with Usher’s experience of blackness, I’ve heard enough stories and listened to enough black creators that I can at least follow his story and comprehend its connotations. If I didn’t come into the show having some background knowledge, then perhaps I would be inspired to learn more based on the representation I’d been made aware of, especially because of the ways in which I could relate and was invited to empathize. I hope we see more successful productions like this, where the specificity and messiness of intersectional, marginalized identity is allowed to exist as it is, because odds are that more people will be willing to engage with it than you’d think.
Anyway, really good show. It’s super fucking funny, and poignant, and deeply sad and vulnerable. I hope anyone reading this gets a chance to see it in some form if they haven’t already.
Also MVP award to Tarra Conner Jones in the SF production, she was SO GOOD. Absolutely everyone was phenomenal - shout-out to John-Andrew Morrison too, his performance of “Periodically” makes me fucking cry. The SF and Broadway and Off-Broadway casts are all amazing. God I love this show.
Edit: OH SHIT I found a clip of the cast I saw! They really were fantastic.
