MJ, a megawatt new jukebox musical on Michael Jackson which opened on Broadway this week, is from the outset a dubious proposition. There is, first of all, the challenge of finding new things to say about an artist who is both ubiquitous – his music and dancing elemental to modern pop – and famously inscrutable. And then there’s the permanent stain on any mention of Jackson’s legacy: the allegations of child sexual abuse, detailed at length in the disturbing, meticulous 2019 HBO documentary Leaving Neverland. (The Jackson estate, which collaborated on the development of MJ the Musical, vehemently denies all allegations; Jackson was acquitted of child molestation in 2005.) If your head is not in the sand, there’s no way to enter the Neil Simon Theatre without a load of uncomfortable baggage.
MJ the Musical, directed and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon from a book by the Pulitzer-winning dramatist Lynn Nottage, mostly ignores that baggage via an electric and absorbing spin through Jackson’s career. It’s a rollicking parade of hits, vocal high points, and a sanitized spin through Jackson’s life that sketches demons without filling them in. It’s also a discomfiting experience, in both what’s obviously left off-stage (this is a commercial Broadway musical which ejected a Variety reporter for asking cast about the allegations at the premiere) and its portrayal of Michael Jackson as a lonely Peter Pan in turmoil. The tone is triumphant; the story is a tragedy.
