Barbican theatre, London
Michael R Jackson’s Pulitzer-winning play is a strikingly original, highly entertaining tour of identity politics and the struggles of selfhood
Michael R Jackson’s “meta” musical is as smart and slippery as it was hailed to be on Broadway. A Black, queer, New York theatre usher (Kyle Ramar Freeman) is writing a play about a Black queer man who, in turn, is writing a play about a Black queer man. So it draws its circles within circles, looping impressively without any contrivance, although there is great intellectual and emotional complication within the loops.
Usher is a sweet, vulnerable twentysomething whose opening number, Intermission Song, sings of travelling through the world “in a fat, Black, queer body.” As familiar as its exploration of identity politics may sound, it is given highly original, often entertaining, treatment with no hint of clunky polemic.
At the Barbican theatre, London, until 9 September.
