“MJ,” on Broadway at the Neil Simon Theatre—directed and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon, with a book by Lynn Nottage and music (mostly) by, well, M.J. himself—begins before the lights go down. While the audience members settle into their seats, a sheer, bluish scrim stretches from the ceiling to the edge of the stage. On it are printed hand-written inspirational notes, short, self-helpy sparks of tough motivation: “study the greats and become greater”; “get all Bob Fosse movie dances, study these inside out know every cut, move, music, etc.” It’s a legendary figure’s notebook gone public, an id bent on besting its forebears, framed as crucial context for the show to come. Behind the scrim, dancers are chatting and stretching and warming up in a dingy, warehouse-like rehearsal space.
And so, before a note is sung, this musical, which swims with obvious labor against the current of its protagonist’s troubled biography, announces its interest not in glamour but in work. “Beat It” is the crowd-pleasing first number, but within the world of the show it’s a work in progress that Michael Jackson isn’t totally happy with. The thirty-three-year-old star (played by the energetic and vulnerable Myles Frost, formerly a contestant on “The Voice”) has already been dubbed the King of Pop and is preparing to embark on a global tour following the success of his album “Dangerous.” He’s wearing what passes, in his universe, for casual clothing: black trousers and loafers, an open white button-down over a tee. He’s critiquing the dancers and giving notes to the band. He’s high-pitched and childish, always ready with a prank—at one point, he puts on a clown nose and cracks himself up—but it’s clear, too, that he’s got no problem being a tremendous pain in the ass in order to get what he wants.
The most harried victims of Michael’s demands are his concert director, Rob (Quentin Earl Darrington, who, in flashbacks, also plays Michael’s father), and his stage manager, Nick (Antoine L. Smith). They’re in the excruciating position of being the unhandleable icon’s handlers. Michael wants a “toaster” for the show—a bungee contraption that will pop him from below the stage into the air above it, like a freshly browned piece of bread. According to his business manager, Dave (Joey Sorge), his list of hoped-for “extravagances” also includes a “jet pack. One thousand tons of equipment. Two hundred and twelve speakers. Eighty cast and crew. An entourage of fifteen. And one cotton-candy machine?”
Frost plays Michael as an extreme perfectionist and a shy mystery all the way down. His physicality is that of a precocious but heedless kid. Frost kicks and spins, wiggles his legs and pops his shoulders almost identically to Jackson; even his walk, a loose-limbed half swagger, brings to mind endless tour footage. The depiction doesn’t quite add anything to our understanding of the real Jackson, but the fact of its rote excellence is a reminder of the freakish nature of Jackson’s fame.
Any actor playing Michael Jackson has to reckon with the uncanny phenomenon of the Jackson impersonation. At weird conventions and on street corners all over the world, there are people who have devoted years to mastering Jackson’s mannerisms and the particulars of his style of dress. You know the getup—a vaguely military jacket and shades, Jheri-curl ringlets escaping a fedora and cascading onto the shoulders. These amateurs can moonwalk and hee-hee with the best of them, in the process revealing M.J.’s artistry as a form of extreme and possibly punishing self-consciousness—ruthlessly honed, as that early scrim conveys. That kind of rigor tends to escape its initial host and start to spread. In Jackson’s case, it became a meme.
It’s a hell of a challenge, then, to imbue the Michael of “MJ” with sufficient psychological and emotional depth to break through the well-studied exterior. Frost gives the studious impression of someone reared on Jackson, and his obvious love for his subject seems like an obstacle. His falsetto can get breathier and softer than Jackson’s ever did—in “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” for example—but other, more significant differences are hard to find. On some level, this impermeability is a sign of Jackson’s willfulness—his great artistic achievement was the creation of a surface that is nearly impossible to break.
This isn’t only Frost’s problem—it affects almost the entire production. Wheeldon’s choreography is excellent, but it’s most effective when it echoes Jackson’s almost exactly. David Holcenberg’s music supervision and arrangement makes for some wonderful moments, primarily those which prompt us to remember sitting in our childhood rooms, listening to or watching videos of Jackson’s songs. The deep nostalgic effect is undeniable. In the theatre, I saw tears, heard glottal, snotty sobs, witnessed ovations that could have gone on all night. Those fainting crowds at Jackson’s 1992 show in Bucharest are currently rivalled on Broadway.
But, of course, Jackson wasn’t just a hard worker with a carefully wrought persona. He was repeatedly accused of child sexual abuse, during his life and after his death—recently, in the upsetting HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland.” Jackson always denied the allegations, but it is unquestioned that he went to extreme lengths to insure that he had intimate access to young children. He was also addicted to painkillers. Jackson’s estate participated in the production of “MJ,” and the musical is set in 1992, the year before the first allegation against the singer became public. But discernible under the show’s surface is a softly subversive, inevitably thwarted desire to tell his story plainly. Lynn Nottage has taken it on herself to subtly suggest some of what the music and the dancing can’t convey.
There are two documentarians following the tour, and one of them overhears Rob and Nick, both worried about Michael’s pill intake, in anxious conversation. “He’s battling demons I don’t understand,” Rob says. Nick replies, “So we’re just gonna keep pretending like there isn’t a problem.” There’s another problem, too, mentioned only once. “Can you tell me, Who the hell is this family that he wants to bring on the tour?” Nick asks. “It’s gonna raise some questions.”
Interviews with the filmmakers send Michael on a series of reveries, from the beginnings of the Jackson Five to his inevitable fracture with his brothers, after his own star began to shine so much more brightly. The bouts of rage from his father, Joseph, and the prayerful enabling of his mother, Katherine (Ayana George), assume their customary harrowing places in Michael’s story. Songs take on biographical coloring: “I’ll Be There” starts off as a duet between Little Michael (Christian Wilson, alternating with Walter Russell III) and Katherine, as Michael seeks refuge from Joseph’s tempest. Teen-age Michael (Tavon Olds-Sample) carries himself with a palpable self-hatred.
All this makes us feel empathetic toward Michael. Still, I wondered, Can empathy be complete without reference to its subject’s worst actions? Can you forgive without acknowledging sin? By the end of the show, I saw Nottage as a kind of internal spy, a playwright-hero trying to save this intriguing spectacle from its tendency toward total avoidance.
One memory, of Joseph lecturing Little Michael, makes for the musical’s most disturbing transition. Joseph is using a brief moment of tenderness to justify his abuse.
The lights go dark and “Thriller” starts to play. It sounds like an origin story trying to set itself free. ♦
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