In the bowels of the brutalist Barbican, the young cast of A Strange Loop are having a tea break. It’s a concept foreign to the musical’s writer, Michael R Jackson. “The first time I got to England,” he says, “I was like, ‘Oh right, I’m American.’ It’s a totally different culture. Like taking tea twice a day during rehearsal – we don’t do that in the US. It takes some getting used to.”
This month, we’ll see whether his show, A Strange Loop, manages to bridge the cultural divide. In the US, it couldn’t have been more highly praised: it won the Pulitzer prize for drama in 2020, then transferred to Broadway in 2022 where it picked up two Tonys, including best musical. Alan Cumming was so impressed he invested money in it, and says of Jackson: “It takes such balls to be so vulnerable and to say, ‘This is my story, I’m writing about what I think, and some of it’s not very nice, some of it’s ugly.’ He doesn’t care about offending or not looking good and ultimately it makes it all the better.”
