UPDATE: This story was corrected at 1:20 p.m. on Friday, April 12. On opening night, swing Rajané Katurah played Katherine Jackson.
A patron rocked an impressively just-so mustache and black velvet jacket with gold braiding at the Buell Theatre for Wednesday’s opening night of the first national tour of “MJ: The Musical” (playing through April 28).
With the musical underway, three friends in the orchestra section shook the seats as they chair danced.
And one theater critic found herself near tears as the hits rolled out from the first album her parents ever gave her, featuring little Michael Jackson and brothers Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Jackie.
The audience’s waves of enthusiasm might simply be signs of the kind of sentimentality the show’s MJ expresses wariness of, or examples of a pining nostalgia for a time that isn’t this vexed present, but even in the midst of this hit-infused show, something deeper about talent and diligence, joy and trauma, and drive, so much drive, takes hold.
If your own Jackson reminiscences aren’t enough, here are five more reasons to hurry to the Buell for a jukebox musical crafted with an attention to detail and pleasure befitting its subject’s stickler tendencies.
On stage, memory proves to be the star worth interrogating.
There will be recollections: Michael Jackson’s and our own, fed by a mix of where we were, who we were when we listened to Michael, when we read about him, when we gawped and loved, worried for and perhaps turned away from the star.
“MJ” opens onto a rehearsal studio, with the musical’s ace ensemble milling about stretching, setting up, waiting for the man himself. All the while, Buell patrons mill about, too, making their noisy way to seats.
When he arrives, Michael (Roman Banks) and stage manager Rob (Devin Bowles) begin rehearsing the dancers and band for 1992’s Dangerous World Tour. With a book by Lynn Nottage, the show focuses on the lead-up to that record-smashing tour, but still enfolds a heck of a playlist. Recollections abound.
Some come from Jackson’s inclusion of Jackson Five music into his upcoming show. But the presence of a journalist, Rachel (Mary Kate Moore) and her MJ fanboy videographer Alejandro (Da’Von T. Moody) allows Jackson to also reminisce more personally about his music, his process and, sometimes, fame.
The MTV documentary crew wants to witness Jackson’s creative process at a time when rumors of child sexual abuse are muted but will soon start to swirl. Jackson shares thoughts about his long relationship to music-making: from kid stardom with Berry Gordy (J. Daughtry) and Motown with four of his brothers; to solo work with Quincy Jones (Josh A. Dawson) on “Off the Wall”; to striking out as his own producer on “Thriller.” In a quick and thoughtful touch, Suzanne de Passe (Zuri Noelle Ford) gets her moment as the boy group’s champion who gets an initially reluctant Gordy signed on.
The Michaels are all that and a bag of chips.
The beautiful trick that Banks pulls off as the adult MJ is to embody, not merely mimic. (Myles Frost won a Tony for the role in 2022). Sure, the actor speaks in that soft voice, even when Michael is demanding something of his manager, his dancers, his agent. Yes, he robots and moonwalks. And still, Banks brings an aura that is his own.
In addition to Banks’ show-shaping turn as MJ, there are two more Michaels: Brandon Lee Harris plays him as a teen and young man, while Josiah Benson (alternating with Bane Griffith) portrays Little Michael. They all have the moves but there’s something that makes each more than a spot-on replica or Vegas lounge act. It’s their talent as singers and dancers, sure. But it’s also the script’s linking each to the making and pathos of a perfectionist, whose drive was forged by his father Joseph’s hard if not violent discipline.
Ir’s smart
“I am a huge Michael Jackson fan,” the show’s writer, Lynn Nottage, told the Los Angeles Times in 2022. “The music is the soundtrack of my life. I perfectly track Michael Jackson from ‘ABC’ to ‘Off the Wall’ to ‘Thriller’ and back. If you remove Michael Jackson’s music, you remove a portion of my childhood.” She is not alone in that particular discography. But she has leavened complexity into her affection. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the show’s focus on the man at creative work.
To the aggravation of his own manager, Dave (Matt Loehr), Rob and maybe (though they’d never complain) the amazing dancers, the King of Pop revises and re-envisions and revises some more. Numbers get inserted and then get removed. He obsesses about a special effect called the “toaster lift” that he imagines catapulting him like a king of pop tart upwards at the concert’s start. The costs and paraphernalia of the tour balloon. The pressures mount and, as they do, his father and mother make appearances. On opening night, Rajané Katurah was tremendous as the Jackson matriarch, Katherine Jackson, who may be kinder and gentler but doesn’t entirely protect her child from her husband’s volatility and manipulations. (Anastasia Talley will play her in most other performances.)
In a great bit of dual casting, Bowles plays both Joseph Jackson and tour manager Rob. It’s a genius gesture that allows the actor to stretch, but also act to protect the audience from living too unrelentingly with what could be called Jackson’s trauma.
It asks us to be smart.
For the most part, the show brackets out the controversies that bedevil Jackson’s legacy, but it doesn’t demand that we do the same. The pill-taking that eventually led to Jackson’s death gets attention. A family who will be part of the Dangerous Tour entourage is mentioned in passing. “MJ” treats us as grown-ups who will, with each faltering idol, continue to reckon with (not reconcile) the ways in which talent and fame can arise out of harm — and can cause damage.
It’s nearly as meticulous in its desire to expertly wow as the singer was.
At the start of intermission, a blue curtain comes down. On it are notes in what is presumably Jackson’s own hand: “Study the great and become great”… “Flash dance. All That Jazz. Bandwagon (girl hunt) number”… “For Criminal Dance look at ALL the great dances on tape.” Not only do these scribblings capture a creative, synthesizing artistic ambition, they also hint at what’s to come when the curtain rises. Indeed, Act II begins with an homage to Fred Astaire, Bob Fosse and the Nicholas Brothers. And once Jackson’s thoughts about those dancer-choreographers are linked to the dance numbers, their influence on Jackson feels like a no-brainer.
But the scrim, its notations and smooth flow into Act II are just one example of the elegant stagecraft of “MJ.” Scenic designer Derek McLane, along with lighting ace Natasha Katz, make room time and again for eloquent quietude or bold, hurly burly (the madness of “Thriller” with Joe Jackson as the monster), or a poignant and collective rumination (“Man in the Mirror”). And true to the ambitions of Jackson to create jaw-dropping moments onstage, the show sticks its landing. And how.
IF YOU GO
“MJ: The Musical”: Music by Michael Jackson. Book by Lynn Nottage. Directed and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon. Featuring Roman Banks, Jamaal Fields-Green, Josiah Benson, Bane Griffith, Brandon-Lee Harris, Devin Bowles, Mary Kate Moore, Anastasia Talley and Da’Von Moody. At the Buell Theatre, 14th and Curtis streets in the Denver Performing Arts Complex. Through April 28. Tickets and info: denvercenter.org or 303-893-4100.
Lisa Kennedy is a Denver-based freelance writer who specializes in theater and film.
