‘A Strange Loop,’ Lyceum Theater
Original Broadway Cast recording (Ghostlight Records and Yellow Sound Label)

The bark of “A Strange Loop” is worse than its bite, which is another way of saying that the word of mouth led me to believe the show would be far less fun than it turns out to be. Maybe this was a strategy: By emphasizing its own weirdness, “A Strange Loop” disarms audiences and catches them off guard. If we expect a show that’s difficult and off-putting, and then it turns out to be highly tuneful, full of catchy songs and humor, the overall experience is something more like a pleasant surprise.

I was led to anticipate a show as dark and grisly as “American Psycho,” a 2013 Broadway musical in which the score is as disturbing as the subject matter — which, obviously, is the point. Yet “A Strange Loop” is neither as strange nor as loopy as it might seem from a distance. Throughout its 100 or so uninterrupted minutes, the score is bright and melodic, both on stage and on the Original Broadway Cast album. 

We encounter the first of many “strange loops” in “Intermission Song,” which introduces us to a man named Usher (the show’s star, Jaquel Spivey), who happens to work as an usher. The major, overarching loop is essentially a framing device: Usher is a “fat, Black, queer” man writing a musical about a fat, Black, queer man who is writing a musical … and so on. 

Yet it’s to the credit of author Michael R. Jackson that this element recedes into the background very quickly — only occasionally resurfacing to remind us that it’s still there. The loop conceit is mainly a “MacGuffin,” as Alfred Hitchcock would say, to gain us entry into Usher’s inner world: his thought processes, his hopes and his dreams, both horrifying and hysterical. 

“Strange Loop” also makes us ponder the notion of a “one-man show.” For starters, Mr. Jackson is one of the few Broadway creators to write book, music, and lyrics (pace Lin-Manuel Miranda and “Hamilton”). In the funniest song in the score, “Writing a Gospel Play,” Usher is tasked with creating a “spiritual urban drama,” which serves as a wickedly funny parody of Tyler Perry. In this story-within-a-story, Usher plays all the characters himself.

Yet for most of the show, we have a full cast of five men and one woman who embody all of Usher’s inner thoughts — most of which represent big anxiety pants and mountainous self-doubt. So there’s a loopy duality between one man playing multiple characters and six actors essentially playing one man.

Mr. Jackson shows us that the light side and the darkness are ever present flip sides of each other.  The melody of “Periodically” is inspirational, sung by Thought 4. (The character naming reminds me of Thing One and Thing Two in “The Cat in the Hat.”) Usher’s mother is trying to express her love for him, and offer “encouragement,” though she can’t help letting it drop repeatedly that she disapproves of his lifestyle.  That the “mother” is played by a man (the dynamic John-Andrew Morrison) wearing both a beard and a dress may constitute a strange loop unto itself.

Tyler Perry is only one of the institutions of contemporary African-American life that Mr. Jackson skewers; the list includes everything from Beyonce and Popeye’s Fried Chicken to the BLM movement and the Protestant Church. “Inwood Daddy,” which graphically describes a very brutal sexual act, loaded down with racist baggage, is the most deliberately unpleasant number in the score. 

Conversely, “Memory Song” is a jaunty, uptempo waltz, repeating the phrase “these are my memories” in a childlike, sing-song manner, reminiscent of the poems and songs of Nikki Giovanni; I won’t be surprised to hear it working its way into shows at 54 Below or Cast Party at Birdland.  

“Precious Little Dream” is both a highly spiritual song and a parody of one. Traditionally, musical theater expresses abject disapproval with a snarl; when Bertolt Brecht depicts British imperialist soldiers trampling the local population in “Threepenny Opera,” the music has a discordant, sinister sound. Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett hit all kinds of dissonant notes in their arias of connubial cannibalism. “Precious Little Dream,” though, is a tune that could carry a traditionally uplifting Gospel message, even while the choir repeatedly chants, “AIDS is God’s punishment.”  

Mr. Jackson, you might say, is the master of the deliberately mixed signal, and it works — both as a show and as an album. That it could make me relate to the plight of a young, fat, Black, queer person is remarkable in itself, considering that I could possibly be included in only one of those categories.