CHICAGO -- When "MJ the Musical" was first floated for Broadway before the pandemic, it was seen as a risky project. The central subject was controversial. Broadway was drowning in musical biographies and the Jackson estate was so known for its tight control of Michael's image and reputation that wise heads wondered how the writer Lynn Nottage ever would find the space for honesty. And even though the reputation of choreographer Christopher Wheeldon was formidable, Jackson's choreographic landscape not only was very familiar, but replicated time after time in one tribute show after another from Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas to the bars of Chicago's South Side.
Yet there we all were at Chicago's packed Nederlander Theatre recently for the official opening of the first national tour of what already is a certified hit in tough times on Broadway. The audience had the kind of diversity of which most theaters can only dream and the atmosphere was utterly electric. The action on stage was halted several times for standing ovations and from where I was sitting, I kept hearing various impromptu vocalizations of variations of "wow." If you doubt the intensity and commitment of Jackson fans, of multiple generations, here was evidence of eternal love and of the ability of this show still to blow them away.
The tour has a new cast: Roman Banks now plays Michael and he's quite different from Myles Frost, who originated the role on Broadway. Banks offers a moving, vulnerable, emotionally centered performance that doesn't so much try to dance every other MJ off the stage so much as try to get to the core of a man who never fully left his Gary boyhood. It's a notably sophisticated piece of musical acting and it raises the stakes of what we are watching.
"MJ the Musical" is set during rehearsals for Jackson's "Dangerous" tour, an extraordinary extravaganza that hit the road between June 1992 and November 1993. It played to 3.5 million people in 70 stadiums and grossed $100 million (a huge sum at the time). Alas for Jackson, that was money that the profligate spender had pretty much already spent on the show, although HBO kicked in another $20 million for the cable rights. At that point, Jackson was at his artistic peak, experimenting with different sounds and also shifting from a hook-y repertoire to grittier, earthier music with more palpable themes of social consciousness and responsibility. Not insignificantly, nonmusical controversy had not yet fully taken hold of his life, as soon it would.
The show uses an intrusive MTV interview crew in the rehearsal room as its device to get out the MJ story (in reality, Jackson filmed most everything he did himself). It portrays Michael as an artistic perfectionist who is a victim first of his own childhood and then of his own fame. It's hard on the family patriarch Joe Jackson, who comes off as a cruel and abusive philanderer who pushed his kids to the breaking point and caused lasting psychological damage. There is real-world evidence of that, of course, although the elder Jackson died in 2018 and is not around to defend himself.
One of the show's split-scene devices is that Joe, who appears mostly in pre-1992 flashbacks, is played by the same actor as a character named Rob, a gentle man who works for Jackson on "Dangerous" and worries about him. That's a tough assignment, and I was knocked out by how well Devin Bowles pulled it off in this touring cast and how deftly he avoided cliché. Most of the rest of the characters, including the brothers, are ensemble roles, although the Jackson part is split three ways with Brandon Lee Harris playing a middle version and (at my performance) Josiah Benson playing the kid. Both are fine young performers, although the show is structured so that the Banks adult version runs the story.
If you're wondering, the show has some 40 of Jackson's hits baked in, with particular stage time given over to the epic songs from the albums "Thriller," "Bad" and "Dangerous." All the mostly digital environment from Derek McLane, Peter Nigrini (a genius) and Natasha Katz (ditto) has arrived in Chicago from the Broadway production.
In the end, though, this jukebox show has turned into a hit because of one extraordinary achievement, and it belongs to Wheeldon.
The movement in the show is recognizably in the Jackson gestalt, but it's not a replication. It's a fresh, independent, complicated and often dazzlingly beautiful choreographic suite, as interpreted not by actors who dance but by dancers, first and foremost. Now that I've seen it a couple of times, my admiration has only grown for how well Wheeldon satisfied the imperative of offering people the moves they think they came to see while at the same time extending everyone's choreographic vocabulary, both presentationally and emotionally. It's a brilliant fusion of originality and reference, art and commerce, homage and the subtlest of challenges to the record. And it's fabulous to watch, just like the King of Pop.
Brandon Lee Harris and cast in "MJ the Musical" First National Tour. (Matthew Murphy/TNS)'MJ the Musical
When: Through Sept. 2
Where: Nederlander Theatre, 24 W. Randolph St., Chicago
Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes
Tickets: $52.50-$132.50 at (800) 775-2000; www.broadwayinchicago.com