HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Drama
The performers wander into the studio in ones and twos in their eclectic active wear. Some are back-up singers. Some are musicians. Others are dancers.
Some begin to stretch. Others stand in huddles and gossip. A couple start practising their dance moves.
And then MJ arrives. He sidles in through the door to the studio, urges his co-performers to keep doing whatever they are doing whilst he quietly appraises them.
Suddenly, the disparate groups coalesce and start performing in sync, like the moving parts of the well-rehearsed machine they are.
Joining them, Michael belts our Beat It, with all the passion of a man born to perform.
It’s 1992 and Michael Jackson is preparing for the Dangerous Tour.
He knows he’s at a crossroads. With the Thriller and Bad albums behind him, he’s enjoyed unparalleled success. He’s the biggest star in the world. Perhaps the biggest ever. But record sales are down worldwide. As is the demand for stadium tours.
And then there are the rumours. Does he sleep in an oxygen tent? How many rounds of plastic surgery has he undergone? Is he bleaching his skin to look more white? Or less black? And what about the pills?
Meanwhile, his domineering father still casts a foreboding shadow. Would Michael be MJ without Joseph? Or was his once-in-a-generation talent always destined to get the world tapping their toes and snapping their fingers?
MJ knows that he’s only ever as good as his last hit record. And his last show. Can he achieve the perfection for which he yearns? And will it be worth the cost?
Thrill Me
I was 15 when Thriller was released. It was the first cassette tape I ever purchased with my own pocket money. I listened to it every day for a year.
The simmering excitement of Wanna Be Starting Something. The quiet lament of Baby be Mine. The fun duet with Paul McCartney, The Girl is Mine. And then the back-to-exhilarated-back powerhouses of Thriller, Beat it, and Billie Jean. Followed by the reflective, Human Nature. I never cared much, if I’m being honest, for Pretty Young Thing.
It was the cassette tape I listened to before I went to school. It was the first thing I played when I came home. If I had a Walkman in those days, I would have listened to Thriller on my way to school and on my way home. But even without that Walkman, I imagined the pavers on the sidewalk lighting up as I made my way to the train station, occasionally indulging in some awkward cross-steps as I went.
Several months into my thrilling Thriller obsession, I found that if I listened to Beat It and Billie Jean on Side B, I could flick the cassette tape over and be close to the start of Thriller on Side A. When my time was limited, I just played that MJ highlights package.
But I loved it all. I just couldn’t get enough.
And I was hardly alone. An estimated 70 million people, and counting, have bought Thriller.
The Moment
MJ: The Musical employs two useful devices to tell Michael’s story.
First there are the preparations for the 1992 Dangerous Tour, and all the fantastic hopes and real-world anxiety which goes with creating timeless art.
Then there is the presence of an MTV reporter and cameraman. Their enquiries allow for a seamless transitions into the past, where we see the making of Michael, from singing Climb Every Mountain in junior high to breaking from the Jacksons to find his own voice.
The principal actors – three MJs at different ages – were magnificent. Admittedly, they may not be Michael Jackson. But who is? They do a splendid job inhabiting the legend.
For me, the opening to Act 2 was just stunning.
It starts with MJ standing alone, centre-stage. A familiar, thumping beat echoes throughout the theatre. MJ walks over to a suitcase on a stand. He withdraws a glittering blue jacket, followed by a sparking white glove and a black Fedora hat. What follows is powerful rendition of Jackson’s performance of Billie Jean at Motown 25, moonwalk and all.
Then comes a sublime sequence where MJ explains how he was influenced by those iconic dancers who had come before him, from Fred Astaire to Bob Fosse. Michael dances with each of them, honouring their legacy but demonstrating his inventive (dance) step: the next stage in the perpetual evolution of performative dance.
A prolonged scene where MJ leads a group of Chicago-era dancers – with sheer black, muscle shirts, slinky dresses and bowler hats – breaks into the evocative hook for Smooth Criminal. And away we go…before returning to the central story of the Dangerous Tour preps and cost overages.
What my Eyebrows Told Me
My wispy eyebrows danced in a High Arch for every minute of MJ: The Musical.
Right from that opening scene when MJ took me back to 1984 when he belted out Beat It all the way through to the climatic renditions of Man in The Mirror and Black or White which closed the show: to a raucous standing ovation.
For more information about MJ : The Musical
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