"Wheeldon’s choreography — performed by Frost along with a superb if amazingly jacked ensemble — remains compelling longer, offering a three-dimensional version of what most of us have seen only from distant arena seats or in dark videos on depthless screens. (The show’s “Michael Jackson movement” is credited to two additional choreographers, Rich + Tone Talauega.) The stage patterns are far more varied and expressive than in similar musicals, scoring points without words as they deliver the thrills and, following the biomusical road map, pave the way between present and past...In this, “MJ” is trying to have it both ways. It wants to blame everything sad and weird about Jackson on others (especially the press, who are equated with the zombies in “Thriller”) but credit him alone for his every good deed and success. Acknowledgment of the choreographers and songwriters he collaborated with is mostly saved for the program."
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"The dancers and singers of the ensemble, who double as secondary characters, are first-rate, and Wheeldon gives them a lot to do. Most of the songs are performed as rehearsals or flashbacks, which is to say as full-on production numbers. (Tracks from Jackson’s 1995 album HIStory are cannily placed by Nottage as character moments.) Like Summer and The Cher Show before it, MJ uses three actors to play its central character at different ages. As the 1992 incarnation, Frost carries the bulk of the role, and not only nails Jackson’s signature sound and moves—yes, of course there’s a moonwalk—but also his otherworldly affect: his diffident grandiosity, his mixture of grievance and mischief, his high and breathy way of talking (at once floaty and determined, like Diana Ross’s spoken-word section of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”)."
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"Paul Tazewell’s magnificent costume design carries the cast through the MJ timeline seamlessly. A killer set by Derek McLane, amplified by gorgeous lighting by Natasha Katz, gives the show a visual beauty that makes it hard to look away. While Jackson's story is flawed, it’s too complicated for anyone who hasn’t danced in his shoes. MJ The Musical, however, is the perfect salutation to the life of an imperfect but gifted icon."
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"If there is a scientific experiment to discover whether or not a jukebox musical ruins even our greatest playwrights, this is it. Perhaps it would have been better just to let her go free. MJ wants to be a concert so much — freed from narrative, it could just be bop after banger after blockbuster, the Beatlemania of our time, animated by Myles Frost’s uncanny portrait. Every moment when people are speaking instead of singing feels wrong. As a concert, it could simply elide all those inconvenient and tragic elements of the Michael Jackson legacy. So why isn’t it one?"
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"Watching MJ, one easily suspects its top-flight creative team was motivated by the same near-maniacal drive. Aside from the pedestrian framing device, MJ pushes hard and unceasingly to move beyond the just-good-enough nostalgia that can turn even second-rate jukebox productions into crowd pleasers. It succeeds: MJ is a wildly entertaining marvel."
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"In answer to the question of whether it’s possible to separate the art from the artist, “MJ” performs a slick, crotch-grabbing sidestep. Packed with nearly 40 hits from Michael Jackson’s irresistible catalogue, the Broadway production from director and choreographer Christopher Wheeldon is not so much a biomusical as a high-shine and surface-skimming rehabilitation tour for its late subject, flattening rather than reckoning with his complex legacy."
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"During a preview I attended, an audience member rose to her feet and waved her hands in the air, as if she had caught the Holy Spirit: an affirmation that to be in Jackson’s presence — even if only through gifted performers — is to experience a spiritual rapture. MJ, like its subject, is captivating and hard to shake. The musical takes audiences through Jackson’s life and catalog with impressive ease, expertly chronicling major milestones."
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"That sordid history would not seem to have foretold a jukebox musical devoted to the upside of Jackson’s genius — and certainly not by artists of the caliber of two-time Pulitzer winner Nottage (“Ruined,” “Sweat”) and the celebrated ballet world fixture Wheeldon. The show’s decidedly selective memory may be off-putting to theatergoers appalled by the stories of Jackson’s alleged misdeeds. Nevertheless, the creative team’s painstaking work has resulted in a riveting, adrenaline rush of a show, propelled by remarkable dancing and a mesmerizing central performance by Myles Frost as the sleek, soft-spoken pop megastar."
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