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The 25-year-old musical theater performer is playing Michael Jackson in the national tour of the jukebox musical, which is in Eugene this week. The show is set one year before abuse allegations against the singer became public.
Jordan Markus’ first memory of hearing a Michael Jackson song was as a child, maybe 5 or 6 years old, in his grandmother Loretta’s house in New Orleans.
The “Bad” music video transfixed the young Markus, who said he had no idea who Jackson was. His fandom intensified after the singer’s death, when Markus was 9 years old. He dressed up as Jackson for Halloween for five consecutive years. And Markus would dance and sing like him around the Atlanta house he grew up in.
“It paid off now,” Markus said, thinking about his family listening to his frequent mimicking of Jackson. “But back then, I’m sure it was like, ‘Oh my gosh. He won’t stop.’”
It’s a role that the 25-year-old Markus first auditioned for in 2023 as an understudy in “MJ: The Musical,” flying to New York from steady stage work in San Diego to snag his first Broadway credit. Now, after two years and a stint leading the show in New York last year, he’s leading the jukebox musical across the country — with a stop this week at the Hult Center in downtown Eugene.
“MJ: The Musical” is set during the lead-up to Jackson’s Dangerous World Tour in 1992, as he frets over the exact details of the stage show, and a journalist filming a documentary wants to go deeper into his life story.
The 1992 timing is not arbitrary. The musical takes place one year before allegations of sexual abuse against children became public in a 1993 lawsuit against Jackson.
For Markus and other fans like him in the audience, it means balancing a love for the artist with the surrounding context of allegations, how the singer’s story ended in real life, and how controversy still divides people years after Jackson’s death.
Embodying a complicated figure
Megahits “Billie Jean,” “Smooth Criminal,” “Beat It,” “Bad” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” all have their moments in the show. Challenging and splashy choreography incorporates Jackson’s dance influences, like Fred Astaire, Bob Fosse and the Nicholas Brothers.
The actors playing Jackson through different stages in his life are pitch-perfect imitations of his voice and physical presence, which Markus said he thought of as regal. Markus said he’s watched every interview Jackson did multiple times and frequently referenced his live shows, like a Dangerous Tour concert stop in Bucharest, to inform his performance
Markus praised how the show, written by two-time Pulitzer-winning playwright Lynn Nottage, humanizes a titanic figure in pop culture. “MJ: The Musical” touches on some of the darker sides of Jackson’s story, like his use of pills and the effects of a childhood under the thumb of father, Joe Jackson, and later, Motown Records’ Berry Gordy.
But much is left unsaid. Many audience members will have Jackson’s alleged — and repeatedly contested — abuse of children in mind if they see the show. (The 1993 lawsuit filed by the family of an accuser was settled for more than $20 million. Jackson was acquitted in 2005 on charges of child molestation, four years before his death).
The musical’s timeline focus — it takes place the year before the first claim of sexual abuse became public — and the genre expectations of a jukebox musical limit a discussion of claims that still shadow Jackson’s reputation, 16 years after his death. “MJ: The Musical” was also produced in association with Jackson’s estate, which profits from the show and has repeatedly denied claims of abuse.
The show hints at the alleged abuse obliquely, like a reference to a family Jackson wants to bring on tour, worrying managers about bad press. In the Act One finale, a barrage of questions is launched at Jackson at a press conference during a performance of “They Don’t Care About Us.”
One reporter asks what he has to say about recent allegations. The reporter doesn’t specify what allegations he means, which in 1992 (as the other reporters ask) would have been related to stories of a nose job, Bubbles the Chimp drama or the Elephant Man’s bones. But the ultimate reference to the allegations that shadowed Jackson’s later career is clear.
In a 2022 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Nottage said she wanted to sustain the complexity of Jackson’s life and music, as a damaged child star trying to tell his life story in music, and that there was room to spotlight a complicated artist without “having to spotlight the complication.”
“When we decide that, for these reasons, this person’s art should be scrubbed from the public record, where do you stop and where do you begin?” she asked. “Do you begin with the quote-unquote ‘Founding Fathers,’ who committed genocide in order to build this country? Do you look at early rock ‘n’ roll artists who were having relationships with girls 12 and 13 years old?”
Markus said the show isn’t an honest portrayal of the pop singer if he completely shuts out the darker side to Jackson’s story.
“I think that Michael was very aware of what people were saying about him while he was alive,” Markus said. “Knowing how heavily it weighed on him, being such a pariah at times in his life, does help my performance. It informs why he moves in certain ways, spiritually and emotionally.”
If you go
MJ: The Musical
- Where: Hult Center, Seventh Avenue and Willamette Street in downtown Eugene
- When: July 22-27
- Tickets: Purchase “MJ: The Musical” tickets here. Pricing varies. Some performances still had tickets starting at $49, while for other shows tickets start at $59 or $79.
