Diep Tran

Toward the end of the play, Amir kneels down in prayer, his arms out and hands outstretched, repeating in Arabic: 'There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.' The stage is dark aside from a single spotlight. In that moment, The Kite Runner is given the rare chance to be still. So much is unspoken in Arison's inflections and body language: his desperation, sadness, and guilt. The moment is haunting in its simplicity. If only The Kite Runner on Broadway depended less on the novel and trusted more on its stagecraft. There might have been more moments like this, of flight and transcendence.

The jokes are sometimes funny, mostly vulgar, with an overreliance on sex jokes and gross-out humor (the same puke gag is used not once or twice, but three times). The cast have genuine comic chemistry with each other, and the audience around me guffawed in particular at Dratch's antics. Thanks to Linda Cho's costumes, I heard the loudest audience laugh this season over a piece of clothing: the high-heeled Crocs worn by Williams, who should be nominated for a Tony Award for how well she pulls them off.

But as I am writing this, it occurs to me that what Jackson does with 'A Strange Loop' isn't just write a musical with catchy tunes and clever lyrics. He's also successfully testing the conceit of how the universal is rooted in the specific. In making the lead character a fat, Black gay man, within an industry (and larger society) that prioritizes and idolizes skinny, white bodies, Jackson is making a Black gay man an embodiment of the universal. And he's also written one of the best, and the most groundbreaking, new musicals of the Broadway season.

The dinosaur earned its entrance applause. Thornton Wilder's play The Skin of Our Teeth, a fantastical tragicomedy about the end of the world, calls for a dinosaur and a woolly mammoth. Typical productions have actors donning animal costumes. But the new Broadway revival of The Skin of Our Teeth goes full Jurassic Park (with the budget to match), with a gigantic brontosaurus, puppeteered by three people, lumbering onto the stage. A two-person-controlled woolly mammoth follows closely behind. These formidable, playful puppets (designed by James Ortiz) inspired gasps of shock and delightful laughter in the audience the night I went. Unfortunately, the dinosaur comes in at the beginning of this three-hour production, and the play struggles in the wake of its long tail.

'Hangmen' also contains some hanging plot threads that are not truly resolved or adequately explained. There may be a theme here about miscarriage of justice and toxic masculinity, but don't strain your neck too hard looking for it. A looser directorial hand would have made these nitpicks moot, because if there's a commitment to the ridiculous, a coherent story is less important. As it is, 'Hangmen' thoroughly wrings its premise dry, but anyone trying to find deeper meaning in McDonagh's play will be left hanging.

The musical's score, an impressive mixture of Irish jigs, 19th century work songs and jazz, reinforces the musical's themes of racial harmony and racial division, while driving the show's energy forward. One group number, 'Why Should I Die in Springtime,' in which the Irish characters lament having to fight in the Civil War, is immediately answered by 'I'll Be a Soldier,' in which the Black characters declare they would fight if America would let them. It's a brilliant battle in musical form. Bill T. Jones's expansive choreography similarly takes on these themes. Jones combines Irish step dancing, tap dancing, modern break dancing and Haitian Yanvalou, yet creates distinctive dances for the Irish characters and the Black characters. The result is character-motivated choreography that is astounding in its density and gorgeous in appearance.

When Shanita (a warm, affable Adams) talks about why she takes pride in her job - saying, 'I'm building something that you can see come to life at the end. Got a motor in it and it's gonna take somebody somewhere' - it is moving and commands your respect. That is perhaps why Skeleton Crew hits more potently now than it did in 2016 for me. When society shut down in 2020, we all saw who the true essential workers are. They are not the CEOs or people who worked in glass high-rises. They are the people stocking grocery store shelves, delivering packages, making cars. And they are disproportionately people of color. Society has now caught up with Morisseau's play. In Skeleton Crew, Morisseau makes us see the line that divides the blue collar and white collar workers as what it really is, a man-made structure that must be dismantled, because it is that line that keeps all of us from realizing our true power.