Flipping the script

Self-made musical theatre megastar Todrick Hall has had it with the brutality, racism and homophobia rife in the US. So, he’s turning his homeland upsidedown. He tells Alannah Maher about the most controversial show of his career.

Prepare for your edges to be snatched, Australia! Todrick Hall is storming his way onto major local stages with his latest international tour - Hall American: The Forbidden Tour. This is the live extension of Hall’s popular album and visual album Forbidden, which dropped earlier this year.

The show is ambitious on multiple levels. The story, set in a dystopian reimagining of America and examines the most controversial themes of Hall’s career to date. The Forbidden Tour also perfectly marries the pop concert experience with musical theatre, on par with last year’s sold-out Straight Outta Oz tour.

“I never see shows that are this much of a hybrid between concert and musical theatre,” said Hall. “We want people to be up dancing, screaming and hollering, singing the lyrics, but it is still a musical experience.”

“There are over 100 costumes, there are eight dancers, three singers, a nice set and a big sea of people bringing the story to life live on stage every night. And we are able to do things we weren’t able to do on camera [for the visual album], which is really cool because I think the story was written to be told in a very musical-esque form.”

Story-wise, Nacirema is a completely role-reversed reimagining of America viewed through a Stepford Wivesmeets-Pleasantville-esque lens, where living in same-sex pairings is the norm and white people are treated as secondclass citizens. Hall’s protagonist, the son of the most powerful people in Nacirema Falls, risks everything when he falls in love with a woman, which is an abomination and the highest form of treason in their world.

Every element of this show is intricately thought out. Hall was conscious that his aim wasn’t to be starring in “’I’m a victim’ the musical”. What he wanted to do was share his perspective as an artist and as a black, queer man.

“I wanted this to be uncomfortable for people to watch,” Hall told Billboard the day before the album’s release. It’s safe to say he has achieved this with the resulting combination of shocking social commentary dotted with absolute pop bangers.

In the song Ordinary Day, Hall serves up some of his most poignant commentary. A black police officer shoots an unarmed white teenager, while the rest of the neighbourhood cheerfully dances through their day, ignorant to the dead body in front of them.

“I thought the only way to make someone in America who doesn’t understand the concept of police brutality against one race compared to another, or to make a straight man understand what it would be like in a gay person’s shoes, the best way to do it would be able to flip it to where they are the outcast. I don’t think that has been done very often.”

I will continue fighting to tell stories that need to be told for a market that’s under-served.”

Forbidden is a self-funded project for Hall, who is not signed to a record label or management. He is not shy in pointing out that a lot of the people he reached out to for help with funding the project fumbled over excuses not to, or outright said it was “too risque”.

“I felt that if I were coming at them with a concept that seemed more, I don’t know, ‘safe’ they would have done it,” he shares. “Or if the package were different, if I were not an openly gay black man maybe they would have been a little [more willing to] risk finances.”

However, the full realisation of Forbidden did not come without help. Along the way there have been collaborations with artists including RuPaul and Brandi. “I’m surrounded by people who believe in me so much that they just bring their talent and work for pennies of what they are worth,” he added.

The album debuted to a top spot in the American iTunes Charts (second only to The Greatest Showman soundtrack) and ranked highly in other countries. Hall believes the popularity “speaks volumes of how necessary this story is”.

“I believe in this story, this music and this project are necessary for people to see and to watch and I know that I will continue fighting to tell stories that need to be told for a market that’s under-served, even if it doesn’t make business sense for other people to back it,” says Hall.

With an outright unfair set of theatrical skills to his credit Hall himself is hard to pin down to one neat label - singer, actor, dancer, choreographer, drag queen, songwriter, etc. His talent alone ensures that The Forbidden Tour will be an outrageously entertaining experience, but it is his provocative ambition that really raises the stakes with this tour.