Todrick Hall is experiencing his own, modern day American revolution in musical theater.
No stranger to controversy, the multi-hyphenate entertainer is on the receiving end of derisive vitriol surrounding his Off-Broadway show “Midnight,” weeks after premiering in New York City. But as the singular sensation who composed, choreographed, directed, produced and stars in the audacious, all-sung fantasy, Hall is taking the brutal backlash from the Black community in stride.
Once the evocative play’s central plot point involving a Black enslaved person falling in love with a wealthy white man was revealed via theater critics’ reviews, all hell broke loose online leading to a flurry of reaction videos, incendiary commentary, and thought pieces (from some people who admittedly never saw the show) permeating the darker corners of the zeitgeist.
The piling on about the polarizing premise of “Midnight,” which also includes parts in which white people are enslaved, invoked an ominous fervor that also led to death threats.
Credit: Valerie Terranova
“I was really surprised at the level of hate that’s come our way and the type of things that people have said,” Hall told URL Media while taking time to snap selfies with well-wishers in Times Square on Thursday afternoon. “I screenshotted something the other day that someone said because I just couldn’t believe the level of vitriol and hatred… like the things that people feel brave enough to say to you online, and we as human beings and as artists have to have the sense of self-worth in order to be able to get up every day and just put our clothes on and put one foot in front of the other, not even mentioning the fact that I have to get on stage and tell this story every day.”
“And I won’t lie for a couple of weeks; it’s been really hard to get up there because this narrative that’s been spun online has made me look at people who look like me in the audience, who I was so excited to see in the audience, and try to guess what their experience is going to be,” he continued.
Currently playing at the Daryl Roth Theatre with an eye on a future Broadway run, “Midnight” is a sprawling musical set in the American South during the 19th century.
Keeping audiences on the edges of their seats
Credit: Valerie Terranova
Rail, an enslaved Black man living on a plantation (played by Hall), is involved in a forbidden, queer love affair with the son of a wealthy white plantation owner (played by Death Row Records singer Jeremy Beloate).
The 41-year-old “American Idol” alum, whose previous theater credits include “Kinky Boots,” “The Color Purple,” and “Chicago,” said he considers himself “to be a person who is like a bridge builder who likes to fill in the gaps.” His own experiences in an interracial relationship and feeling isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic inspired the envelope-pushing musical.
Wearing many hats (à la Tyler Perry), Hall is veering into uncharted territory in commercial theater with such a daring work of theatrical art.
“I think there’s a box and an expectation that the Broadway community has … and I think that right now Broadway, just in general, I don’t want to say that it’s broken, but we’re trying to figure out what this new age of Broadway looks like in a world where people are so inundated with Netflix and TikTok, and people can get immediate gratification for not that much money, and right now we’re trying to figure out how do we engage an audience of people who can watch an entire experience in less than a minute and then go on to another one,” he explained.
“I set out to write a musical that would make even people with no attention span or people who might typically fall asleep at the theater be engaged and on the edge of their seat for an entire two and a half hours,” he added.
Despite the controversy, show producers, including former Disney CEO Bob Chapek and music mogul Scooter Braun, announced that the sold-out, limited engagement has been extended to January due to increased ticket demand.
Hall, who admitted that the show is “far from perfect” and still a “work in progress,” believes he is on the right track to head to Broadway.
Credit: Valerie Terranova
“You know, we are still essentially what an out-of-town tryout would be doing,” he said. “We’re fixing our show, and it’s nowhere near ready for me to put the paintbrush down, but it was a conscious decision to come to New York, where the critics are going to be the toughest that they would be, in my opinion, than in any place in the world, so that we could get the criticisms we were going to get and be able to fine-tune the show to get it ready for the Great White Way.”
The Arlington, Texas, native said that even though security has been beefed up at the theater amid the blowback, the silver lining is his interactions with audience members who experienced the show for themselves.
“A group of people who came yesterday didn’t know each other but were holding each other by the end,” Hall shared. “I can’t think of a time that I’ve gone to the theater and seen that happening. I was, like,’This is incredible. This is why I wrote this show.’ And if some people dismiss it, and are like, ‘I don’t want a kumbaya with white people,’ ‘I don’t want this oneness,’ or ‘I don’t want this we’re all in this together vibe at the end of the show because that’s not my lived experience,’ that’s okay too. I totally respect that so much, but I love to see it happening before my eyes. It just feels like magic.”
‘People have to look a little deeper’
An area of the blowback the “Hungry Games” creator takes umbrage to is his detractors likening “Midnight” to trauma porn or insinuating that it’s only getting a shot at being produced on a large scale because white people are comfortable seeing these types of slave narratives on stage.
“It’s not a story about slavery, it’s not a slave story. And if you minimize the experience to just being that, I don’t think that you’re going to enjoy the show,” he said.
Credit: Valerie Terranova
“[This] is a story of compassion and of empathy, of humanity … and I think that people have to look a little deeper. We have to challenge ourselves to be able to think, and sometimes it’s easier for you to say something is black and white rather than to acknowledge that it’s gray or that there’s sepia there. You know, some people can’t think far enough to think that, or they want to be a part of a movement and they want to be in alliance with ignorance, and that’s never gonna get us far. I think if you haven’t seen the art, you can say you don’t want to see it because you think it’s gonna be this. But unless you sat down in the theater and experienced the show for three hours, you don’t know what the story is about. And having somebody who doesn’t have a great experience in theater tell you what they think the show was, and you taking their word for it, it’s just a little bit closed-minded, and I would really like to challenge everybody to if they have the ability to, they should come and see the art for themselves and decide whether it’s for them or if it’s not.”
According to the “Celebrity Big Brother” star, “Midnight” couldn’t be happening at a more appropriate time.
“I think we’re about to go into a political period with the elections and everything where that is just inherently a time where people are at odds and butting heads because nobody wants to listen to anyone,” he said.
“Some people don’t want to think for themselves. They say, ‘I’ve always been a Democrat or I’ve always been a Republican, and I will always be this.’ And I think that even though sometimes people think, ‘Well, what is art going to do? How is art gonna change hearts and minds?’ … What I know for sure is that if you’re sitting in a corner and assuming that art and music stories and lived human experiences can’t change lives, then you’re not actually being on the right side of history. You’re not actually doing anything or contributing to positive change. You’re like festering and being complacent and being okay with things just staying the way they are, and that’s totally fine. That’s everyone’s prerogative.
Credit: Tricia Baron
“But, I will never be that person,” Hall added. “I have no desire to be that person. I want to be a part of positive change, even if in the moment, even if in my lifetime, I never get to see the effects of what my artistry can do. I like to challenge people and make them think of things outside the box. It’s one of the greatest joys in my life, and it’s hard to do that.”
Written By Karu F. Daniels for URL MEDIA
Reposted with permission
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