Pandemic taps the brakes on ‘A Strange Loop,’ the Broadway-bound Pulitzer winner

“A Strange Loop,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical that was to begin its journey to Broadway at Washington, D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre in September, has been postponed, the company announced Thursday. The D.C. engagement is now slated for summer 2021 as the show’s next step.

Likesomanyprojectsintheplanning stages, “A Strange Loop” is caught in the logistical nightmare of covid-19 curtailments.

“All theaters are having to learn what it means to open in phases, to protect our audiences and our artists,” said Maria Goyanes, Woolly’s artistic director. “So we are going to be moving ‘A Strange Loop’ to now end the Woolly Mammoth season. The hope is that we would be able to start performances early next summer.”

Michael R. Jackson’s musical, an autobiographical carousel of sorts, set in the overcaffeinated mind of a conflicted black gay playwright, has had its fortunes boosted by the Pulitzer it garnered May 4. So Jackson, Goyanes and Barbara Whitman - a New York producer attached to the show since its development period - were especially keen on establishing a realistic new timetable.

“I think we just didn’t know what was going to happen, with the daily saga of this virus,” said the Detroitborn Jackson. “Also, the thing I had beenthinkingaboutispeople’sstate of mind: When would people want to sit together and watch a show and have that communal experience again? It’s such a psychically traumatic thing. It’s going to take a while for people to relax with each other.”

Of the 10 musicals awarded the Pulitzer Prize over the past century - among them, “South Pacific,” “A Chorus Line,” “Rent” and “Hamilton” - “A Strange Loop” is the first to win without having been staged on Broadway. It debuted in a wellreceived production, directed by Stephen Brackett, last summer at off-Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons. For Jackson, who has been honing “A Strange Loop” in readings and workshops for nearly two decades, the past 10 days have been like none before. And as the first black musical theater writer to win, the honor has felt all the more remarkable.

“It’s meaningful to me in the sense that perhaps the culture will listen to other people of color and in my case, black voices in particular,” said Jackson, 39, a graduate of New York University’s highly regarded musical theater program. “My career in musical theater was not a predestined one, but also once I decided that was what I wanted to do, I didn’t give myself a Plan B.

“It hasn’t been easy and it hasn’t always been fair, but I stuck with it. I wanted to get my voice out there and my message and my musical. It’s important in that respect, if I’m the first black composer. I want to hearfromthesecondandthethird.”

Whitman, who was a producer on Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s “Fun Home,” a musical with offBroadway roots that went on to Broadway and Tony-winning success, wants to take “A Strange Loop” to Broadway sometime after the Woolly Mammoth production. It will retain Brackett as director. Casting is still to be determined, althoughJacksonsaysheisdevotedto thePlaywrightsHorizonsensemble.

An intimate, unconventional musical, “A Strange Loop” probably doesn’t have a huge upside for the tourist market, which - before the pandemic - was Broadway’s mainstay. There is great uncertainty about what the constellation of shows will look like whenever Broadway does reopen. But if a resurgent Times Square becomes more dependent on New York audiences who gravitate toward more sophisticatedfare,“AStrangeLoop” may be well positioned.

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Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.