★★★★☆

This Pulitzer and Tony award winning musical has finally arrived in London for a limited run over the summer at the Barbican Theatre. To quote the opening number, this is a ‘big black queer-ass Broadway show’. Like the many of the audience at the Barbican theatre I suspect that I don’t fit into those demographics and so I was curious how I would relate to this.

Usher (Kyle Birch) is a plus sized, black, queer man, and usher at The Lion King on Broadway and at the same time is trying to write his own musical. Continually living in his head are the 6 Thoughts (Nathan Armakwei-Laryea, Danny Bailey, Eddie Elliott, Sharlene Hector, Tendai Humphrey Sitima, and Yeukayi Ushe). They offer him daily doses of self-loathing, and offer their view on his sex life, his job, his relationship with his parents, and his attempts to write his show – views that are definitely not uplifting. He also has to deal with his parents who want to know why they spent all their money to send him to NYU if he’s just going to work as an usher, why he can’t just write a lovely gospel show, and are concerned as to whether or not he has caught AIDS yet.

This show does not shy away from dealing with uncomfortable issues. The lack of an interval forces you to confront them all in a single session. The last two summers have seen a glitzy production of Anything Goes and this is certainly not aimed at the same audience!

The direction by Stephen Bracket and the choreography by Raja Feather Kelly is slick and engaging. The set design by Arnuflo Maldonado is deceptively simple with bars of light framing the stage and six doorways across the back. However I will just say that there is a surprise element to the set in the latter half of the show.

Kyle Birch recently took over the role and he was very engaging and likeable from the start. He takes the audience on the journey with him – through the good and the bad – and his rendition of ‘Second Thoughts’ was exceptional.

What is clever about this is that even if you don’t belong to the same demographic as Usher, there is still something universal about how he is trying to navigate life.

But at the same time it can clearly be received differently by different audience members. The writer, Michael J Jackson, has said that he wants the audience to either be looking in a mirror or looking through a window. For me, it is definitely the later. It forced me to confront some of the views I have and the way I perceive groups of people without realising it.

It has an age restriction of 16+ (for very good reasons) and there are a number of trigger warnings. It is also probably not one to take your grandparents to see (and if you are in your late teens/20s and going with your parents, you are probably going to want to sit in a different part of the theatre to them). It is also quite firmly rooted in American culture and there are parts of that which don’t translate well in the UK (yes, I did have to google Tyler Perry when I got home, but am old enough to know who Blanche, Dorothy, and Rose are).

Overall this is a show that is low key on the surface but ultimately explodes with heart and passion. Theatre is meant to challenge you and make you think. Whilst fun nights out are always good, theatre can do so much more than entertain, and this show certainly does. It is the shows that make us think that stay with us. Ultimately we have self-power to write the stories we inhabit. Usher is the writer of his own story and he can choose to end his show anyway he likes – even if it is with his back to the audience.

A Strange Loop is playing at The Barbican Theatre in London until 9th September. Tickets available here – https://strangeloopmusical.com

Photos © Dave Hogan