Musicals have embraced nostalgia almost since their inception but lately we’ve reached a critical mass of shows that lean on our collective memories as a shortcut to our hearts and minds. Riding on a wave of music and stories that connect powerfully and sensorially to our past, we’ve been primed to accept, with little complaint, a show like MJ the Musical.
MJ is a perniciously nostalgic, baldly propagandistic celebration of Michael Jackson, a show that takes advantage of our love for looking back to distract from the ways the artist’s legacy has been tarnished by a raft of devastating allegations of child sexual assault.
The musical zooms in on two days in 1992, when the singer and his team were in the last moments of rehearsal for the first leg of the record-breaking Dangerous world tour. Onstage we watch MTV reporter Rachel (Penny McNamee) gently interview Jackson (Roman Banks). His answers allow us to travel through time and watch as a child star grows into his musical career (Liam Damons plays Jackson as a teen and young adult; on opening night, William Bonner played little Michael).
This framing device is canny and craven: it places the story one year before the first allegations of child abuse were made public in 1993, on the day the second leg of the Dangerous tour began. Rachel can sense tension and zeros in on Jackson’s abuse of painkillers (many Dangerous tour dates were cancelled while the singer attended rehab). She does not follow up a brief concern, included in a list of worries about the tour from his team – a stray mention of a “family” Jackson wants to bring along on the tour. Of course she doesn’t. The musical is sanctioned by Jackson’s estate, which also profits from it.
Room is made to consider the abuse Jackson suffered from his father, Joe Jackson, in several flashback scenes – the role of Joe is played by Derrick Davis, who also plays Jackson’s tour director. Lynn Nottage’s book makes glancing mention of the social and historical factors of the world around Jackson (comprehensively and contextually covered in Leon Neyfakh and Jay Smooth’s podcast Think Twice: Michael Jackson, for MJ attenders seeking more information) and marks out the milestones of his career – the Jackson 5, Motown and breaking out on his own to record with Quincy Jones – with little focus on the personal.
I had assumed going in that MJ the Musical, given its commercial success, would look the other way from the devastating and deeply unsettling stories of alleged child sexual abuse carefully detailed in HBO documentary Leaving Neverland (a sequel will be released this month), that it would simply cut these out of the timeline to instead focus on the seismic effect of Jackson’s songs, which have shaped pop music ever since. Directed by Christopher Wheeldon and overseen here by the resident director Effie Nkrumah, MJ does lean hard on the music, which is breathtakingly staged and thrillingly performed.
But MJ also has a clear and obvious agenda: do not listen to the press, it tells audiences. It tells us this over and over again.
MJ uses music in two ways: there are numbers that exist within the chronological timeline of the artist’s life, and there are numbers that take scenes to that elevated emotional space that musicals can create, where a conversation transforms into a song to better capture the truth of the conversation.
When the singer faces a press conference on a break from rehearsals, he doesn’t answer any questions; instead, the moment transforms into a defiant, heart-thumping act one closer: 1995’s They Don’t Care About Us, which parallels Jackson’s personal crises with larger cases of oppression. The lyrics take direct aim at press-led “speculation” and “allegation” that “trash” him. We are invited, even instructed, to cheer this on.
Later, when Rachel tries to press on Jackson’s multiple controversies, he responds with the song Human Nature. Multiple conversations dismiss reports or stories about Jackson as press attacks; as we watch, we are asked implicitly to sympathise and agree.
In Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theater, John Bush Jones describes the American musical as a form that sets out to “transform, not just report, the tenor of the times”. These are critical times for the Michael Jackson brand, and MJ the Musical is working hard to control the way we remember him.
The show is playing in the US, the UK, Germany and now here in Australia. You could call it “opiate of the masses” – and you wouldn’t be far off.
MJ the Musical is at the Sydney Lyric until 3 August
