Even before MJ begins, the excitement in the air is palpable. Some people who don't like Michael Jackson, for one reason or another, but none of them are in the audience.
This is a production that focuses on Michael's music, as emphasized in the "show within a show," the documentary being made about Michael's upcoming live tour. Three actors play Michael, at different phases of his life: the adorable Christian Wilson (at the performance I saw), the striving teenager (Tavon Olds-Sample), and the brilliant but deeply conflicted adult (Myles Frost). It must be said here that Frost is nothing less than spectacular.
Director/choreographer Christopher Wheeldon makes sure every move is perfect, and the almost-all-African-American cast is up to the task. Kalie May Grinder is the Caucasian exception, a petite redhead who conveys pure joy, and who, with the turn under of her tights, takes us from one era to another.
Quentin Earl Darington seamlessly holds the production together, switching with ease from the sympathetic but frazzled Rob to the sinister and totally unlikeable Joseph Jackson, who is nothing less than a bully. He forces his boys, The Jackson Five, to rehearse when they're exhausted after a show, hits Michael hard enough to knock him down, and makes fun of his vulnerable boy by pointing out how big his nose is and how uneven his skin appears. Yet we understand Joseph; a quick drive through Gary, Indiana, is all it takes to see — and smell — what the Jackson kids have to escape.
