That’s been both an annoyance and a help.”
“When I say that, I mean that, my whole identity as a person just in the world, has always been sort of tied to that man, because of our names. “See what I did there?” He stopped, started again, wanting to clarify.
He chuckled, his buoyant, lisp-tinged laughter calling to mind fluttering shirttails. “It’s a strange loop,” Jackson told me on the phone when I mentioned the coincidence. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning metafictional musical, which premiered on Broadway in April. This image advertised “A Strange Loop,” the playwright Michael R. Seven blocks away, at the Lyceum Theater on 45th Street, another sign bore the name “Michael Jackson” and an illustration of a 20-something Black man’s head in semi-profile, with six tiny bodies floating around his face and hair. On 52nd Street, at the Neil Simon Theater, where “MJ: The Musical” has been running since December, there’s a graphic of the King of Pop in his iconic early ’90s pose: fedora perched low, obscuring his face shirttails flying in the artificial wind white glove high-water pants sparkling socks feet en pointe. ĭuring a walk along the Great White Way this winter, I saw something peculiar: two marquees advertising two Michael Jacksons. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.
