A Strange Loop – The Barbican – Review

A funny, filthy, messy, musical masterpiece

★★★
Actor in usher uniform stands in front of a company of actors in A Strange Loop at The Barbican London June 2023
A Strange Loop at The Barbican. Photo: Marc Brenner

A Strange Loop is a fascinating scientific theory about how the brain works, and the musical by Michael R Jackson that it has inspired is just as interesting. Before I tell you about my evening inside the brain of a fat queer black theatre usher (his words, not mine), I should warn you that it’s theatre far more experimental than you might expect from a Tony Award winning Best Musical, and quite possibly the filthiest play currently on a London stage. If you can handle both those elements, you might quite enjoy it. I know I did, but not as much as I hoped.

The main character in A Strange Loop is Usher, who is an usher in a Broadway theatre, where The Lion King is performing. He is played in this transfer to The Barbican by Kyle Ramar Freeman who was in the Broadway production. He’s on stage the whole time and it’s a phenomenal singing and acting performance full of pathos.
Usher, a sweet, vulnerable,  self-loathing young man is trying to write a play. As he does so, he’s assailed by various thoughts, played by six actors. They might be memories or fears or desires, but the key point is, they’re all in his head telling him, what he might write about or, more likely, what he shouldn’t write about, which is the truth about what goes on in his brain.
Although early on, Usher says he is writing a play about an usher writing a play about an usher writing a play and so on, this is more by way of an analogy for what happens. What we see is a series of trips into Usher’s brain. At the end of each episode, he may have a new idea about what he should write, but it is always the same Usher.
This fits Douglas Hofstadter‘s theory of A Strange Loop, which describes a creative thought process that apparently develops within the brain but ends up in the same place. The way our brains tackle the question ‘Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ is this concept at its simplest.
The book by Michael R Jackson builds a whole dazzling structure based on Mr Hofstadter’s observation. It is verging on a masterpiece and a worthy winner of the Pulitzer Prize.  Clearly a talented man, he also wrote the music and lyrics. The music is pleasant, fairly straightforward pop. The lyrics can be a bit clunky at times but they’re amusing, touching and often very rude including frequent references to anal sex, albeit using a more coarse expression.
A Strange Loop at The Barbican. Photo: Marc Brenner

There is a lot of comedy. Usher has some difficult conversations with his parents about the ‘sin’ of being gay, the punishment that is AIDS, and how he should write a more popular kind of play – a gospel play.  It is also amusing, given where he works, that, in his mind, his mother refers to his father as Mufasa. On one occasion, a handsome stranger shows an interest in him and appears to be attracted to him but then turns out to be a figment of his imagination.

Some of the things going on in his brain are either not funny or have a sharp edge to the humour. His self-loathing manifests itself in a sense of inferiority, particularly to white people. So we have a fairly amusing scene in which he is rejected by everybody on a dating app because of his small penis, and a highly distressing scene in which he is sexually and racially abused by a gay white man.
I was prepared to go along with this because it was the truth about what was in his brain, and his thoughts are key to his character. Add to which, the musical is written and acted by black people, but I was still left feeling extremely uncomfortable at the expressions of racism and homophobia.

Expensive vacuous programme

I do take issue with a feature in the programme that said ‘the show’s language wouldn’t sit comfortably with your maiden aunt.’ It’s the kind of sexist expression that most people binned years ago. By the way, that is the only feature in an £8 programme with no song list and no colour photos of the show. A feature on Strange Loop theory would have been useful, as would one on Tyler Perry.
Because a further problem I had with this musical was that it is rooted in Black American culture. There were numerous ironic references to Tyler Perry, as someone to aspire to. Now I know him as a film actor, but I had no idea that he is a hugely successful producer of TV sitcoms and films aimed at Black people.
When Usher is told ‘Tyler Perry writes real life’, the sarcastically responds in the song of that title:
He writes stories ’bout fat, black women with weaves
Finding love and redemption
With muscle-bound black men who own their own business
And truly love the Lord.
I think there were probably a few other perspectives on life which Black Americans might share but which I, as a White Brit, felt excluded from. I accept that’s my problem, not the show’s. Usher rejects his parents’ plea to him to write an ‘intersectional’ play, in other words, one that will cover ground where Black and White audiences’ interests intersect. I take it Mr Jackson chooses not to compromise either.
Stephen Brackett again directs as he did on Broadway, and Raja Feather Kelly once again supplies the choreography. The result is a slick, pacey 100 minutes. The set by Arnulfo Maldonado is deceptively simple. It’s a fairly bare stage with door frames from which characters emerge and disappear. At first, I wondered if it was intended for a smaller more intimate stage, then, well into what might have been the second act had there been an interval, there is a transformation which is wondrous. I don’t want to say too much about it but I gather it will mean even more if you are familiar with Tyler Perry’s oeuvre.
Apart from the brilliant American import Kyle Ramar Freeman, the rest of the cast are, I think, British but carry their parts convincingly. Nathan Armarkwei- Laryea, Danny Bailey, Eddie Elliott, Sharlene Hector, Tendai Humphrey Sitima and Yeukayi Ushe are all very good actor-singers.
So, A Strange Loop is quite shocking at times, and more than a little confusing, but plenty of nice tunes, a good deal of laughter and a fascinating deep dive into how the creative brain works.
A Strange Loop can been seen at The Barbican until 9 September 2023.
Paul paid for his ticket.

 

5 Reasons Sutton Foster Triumphs in Anything Goes – review

Sutton Foster’s West End debut is the top


★★★★★

Production photo of Sutton Foster in Anything Goes at The Barbican Theatre London
Sutton Foster in Anything Goes. Photo: Tristram Kenton

Cole Porter’s Anything Goes at The Barbican is the best musical performance I’ve seen in a long time, maybe ever. And it’s thanks to one person- Sutton Foster.

This is Sutton Foster’s first London appearance. I guess Broadway audiences know all about her qualities but in this review I’m going pick out the five key moments in which she showed she has what it takes to launch this show into the musical stratosphere. That’s not to play down the importance of Kathleen Marshall who directed and choreographed the original Broadway production and gave Sutton Foster the vehicle to show off her talent. Nor am I underestimating the support she receives from Robert Lindsay and others. And we can never forget the foundation stone of Cole Porter’s songs.

Sutton Foster very nearly didn’t appear. The part of nightclub singer Reno Sweeney was due to be played by Megan Mullally, but after she dropped out with an injury, Ms Foster- the original Tony Award-winning Reno- was drafted in. Well, Megan Mullally’s bad luck is our good fortune.

Let me set the scene. Nearly all the action takes place on the deck of a ship with interior scenes rolled on or dropped in as needed, so we nearly always have in view Derek McLane’s phallic funnels and vaginal doors and portholes, never letting us forget that this is a musical that’s at least as much about sex as romance. Then there are the parallel lines of those smokestacks which prepare us for the precision of the chorus lines.

1 She Acts

After a jolly overture in which the conductor Stephen Ridley wears a naval officer’s white hat, the top of which is picked out by  a spotlight, and a short scene that kicks off the ludicrous and frankly irrelevant plot, we meet Reno Sweeney for the first time. She sings I Get A Kick Out Of You.

In modern musicals, which is to say mainly those written after Rodgers And Hammerstein changed everything, the songs are led by and enhance the story. In Cole Porter’s hey day, the 1930s, it was more a case of the story being built around the songs. So we have this classic love song, sung by Reno about young Billy Crocker. She says she’s in love with him but in no time at all she’s helping him snare the love of his life Hope Harcourt.

Even though it seems like her feelings for Billy are invented simply so she can sing this song, and even though we’ve heard it a thousand times, you very quickly realise that something extraordinary is happening here. Sutton Foster is putting in phrasing- pauses, emphases- making it personal. She’s singing like she really doesn’t understand why she has feelings for this young man. She forces this and every other song she sings (and she does have all the best songs) to mean something in the context of the show. It’s like hearing the song for the first time. Because she is acting the song.

2 She’s Funny

After Billy decides to stow away on an ocean liner bound for Britain so that he can court Hope, only to discover she is engaged to an aristocratic Englishman, Reno gives him a confidence boost. She tells him You’re The Top. It may start as Reno trying to cheer up Billy but it ends as a competition between them to find ever more bizarre compliments. So we begin with the over-the-top

‘You’re the Nile
You’re the Tow’r of Pisa
You’re the smile
On the Mona Lisa’

but end with ‘You’re broccoli.’ Now, this is a comic song but Sutton Foster takes the comedy to a new height thanks to her facial expressions: puzzlement at some of the comparisons, triumph when she finds yet another rhyme. She is indeed ‘the nose on the great Durante’.

3 She’s A Team Player

Prtoduction photo of Robert Lindsay and Sutton Foster in Anything Goes at The Barbican Theatre in London
Robert Lindsay and Sutton Foster in Anything Goes. Photo: Tristram Kenton

Billy and Hope, played by Samuel Edwards and Nicole-Lily Baisden, have a moment, as does Gary Wilmot, who doesn’t have a lot to do but what he does is reliably comic. Then Sutton Foster and Robert Lindsay have their only number together, Friendship. Usually, the part of Moonface Martin, a gangster disguised as a priest, is a relatively minor character in a subplot but in this production- and all credit here to the director Kathleen Marshall– he becomes a lead.

On Broadway, the great Joel Grey took the part. In London, we, and Sutton Foster, are blessed with Robert Lindsay. It sometimes seems Mr Lindsay can do anything. I last saw him extracting tears as a legendary Hollywood cameraman suffering from dementia in Prism. But of course, he is a skilled comic actor as he showed as the star of the revival of Me And My Girl. His greatest quality is his understanding of how to work an audience.

So his patter as he breaks off from the duet is pure vaudeville and transforms a comic song into comedy genius, with jokes about it being a shame Sutton Foster’s London debut is in the City of London, not the West End. And if you’re not familiar with this in-joke, it’s true that while the size of the venue and the show are ‘West End’, it is geographically speaking somewhat to the east. And what’s great about Sutton Foster is that she sails with him on this almost stream of consciousness, so that they really do seem like friends.

4 She Can Dance

The climax to the first act is the song Anything Goes. If there’s a serious theme to this musical (and there probably isn’t), it’s that standards of good and bad and right and wrong have been swept away in contemporary society, and that anyone can become a celebrity, including gangsters like Moonface Martin and Public Enemy Number One Snake Eyes Johnson, whom Billy Crocker is mistaken for, just as we find in today’s celebrity culture. This suits Cole Porter’s cynicism and gives us the song and show title.

By now, we’ve already tasted the quality of Kathleen Marshall’s choreography but this number goes up a gear. The company generates enough energy for a power station. Sutton Foster’s energy is nuclear. And so is her dancing, as she leads the synchronised stage-filling chorus through a tap routine that just builds and builds. I can’t remember when I last saw a standing ovation at the end of act one.

5 She has limitless energy

So act two opens with Reno singing Blow Gabriel Blow, a song that absolutely doesn’t fit. Why on earth would a nightclub singer sing a gospel song? Apparently, it’s because she was once an evangelist. Okay, why not? For quality of choreography and performance, it takes up where Anything Goes left off. The number starts with Sutton Foster in a preacher’s outfit but before long she and her troupe have shed their white robes to reveal red, devilishly skimpy showgirl dresses that show she also has a fantastic figure. When the dancers sway rhythmically in a close group it’s like a cauldron and again Sutton Foster, who must have been exhausted as the end of act one, is right at the centre of it, setting the stage on fire.

It’s worth remembering that the part of Reno was written for Ethel Merman and has been played in the past by luminaries such as Patti Lupone and Elaine Paige. We can add Sutton Foster to that pantheon of musical stars. Her next role is alongside Hugh Jackman in The Music Man on Broadway. I  hope, after this success, we’ll be seeing more of her on this side of the Atlantic.

Those were my five moments to remember but there’s a lot more to enjoy in the production, of course. A delightful version of The Gypsy in Me in which the English Lord Evelyn Oakleigh, played by Haydn Oakley, reveals a previously unexpected passionate side leading to a comic tango with Sutton Foster, which includes an impressive vertical split from her. There’s the comedy song Be Like The Bluebird which gives Robert Lindsay a brilliant solo moment; and Carly Mercedes Dyer who recently acted everyone else off the stage as Shug Avery in the Leicester Curve production of The Color Purple gives the raunchiest version imaginable of Buddie, Beware.

Without Sutton Foster, and Robert Lindsay in support, this production would still be amusing, energetic and visually impressive but, with them, it’s the top.

Anything Goes performed at The Barbican until 31st October 2021. A return to the Barbican and a tour are planned for 2022 (with a new cast).  An excellent film of the stage show is available on BBC iPlayer anythinggoesmusical.co.uk

Click here to watch the video of this review on YouTube

 

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