Although Beguiling and Funny, This Meta Exercise Has Aged a Bit Since 2019

The work earned a Pulitzer Prize for drama, making it one of only 10 musicals — and the first crafted by a black artist — to achieve that honor.

Jaquel Spivey as Usher, center, and his six ‘Thoughts’ in ‘A Strange Loop.’ Marc J. Franklin, 2021

It has been a relief in this Broadway season to welcome more than a couple of musicals that offer not only new songs but truly original premises. “Six” finds the wives of Henry VIII competing to determine who had it the hardest. In “Flying Over Sunset,” Cary Grant, Claire Luce Boothe, and Aldous Huxley drop LSD together. (All three did use the drug, Huxley most famously.)

No new musical, though, has boasted a more unique foundation than “A Strange Loop,” which was also inspired by the life of a real person: Michael R. Jackson, who wrote the book, music, and lyrics. This Mr. Jackson bears no relation to the late pop superstar or any of his kin, or to anyone historically or currently famous, as far as I know. 

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