Julien Nitzberg Announces Musical FOR THE LOVE OF A GLOVE, An Unauthorized Musical Fable

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Remember that cheap shitfest excuse of a &quot;musical&quot; that will laugh at the MJ allegations while mocking MJ and child abuse? Look who&#39;s on board! Wade&#39;s BFF! &#55356;&#57226; Yay! This is - most of all - a mockery of any true CSA victim. All while the usual leeches keep profiting from MJ&#39;s name. <a href="https://t.co/ET2sUL1m20">pic.twitter.com/ET2sUL1m20</a></p>&mdash; kapowski &#55356;&#57331;&#65039;*&#55356;&#57096; (@santikapowski) <a href="https://twitter.com/santikapowski/status/1219751069900791809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 21, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
This whole project... It's so bizarre I can't wrap my head around it. Literally anything with MJ name attached sells like hotcakes, so why did they have to go with such an absurd idea?
One thing I'm worried about is that since it's apparently a satire any criticism of this trash is met with accusations of fanatism and having a stick up one's derriere. Doesn't matter that the musical basically accepts all these baseless accusations as facts and runs with it, we're just supposed to loosen up because it's not that serious.
 
Isn't this supposed to open pretty soon? I'm a little shocked at the people involved, as well as the Avenue Q style puppets-that's a lot of money right there.
And I'm really interested in how Donny Osmond will react-he is alive, after all.
 
The promotional 'advertorials' for this are sounding ever more desperate.


A THEATRICAL TAKE ON MICHAEL JACKSON&#8217;S LIFE THAT&#8217;S BEYOND OFF THE WALL

Today&#8217;s doublespeak world can be perplexing. Quentin Tarantino rewrites the tragedy of the Manson murders into a cheerful award-winning finale, our president tells tall and twisted tales daily, and social media spins everything into multiple layers of distracting dogma and &#8220;fake news&#8221; (a term ironically used by those who lie the most). The truth often varies widely from storyteller to storyteller, and where a pop culture icon like Michael Jackson is concerned, it&#8217;s hard to know what to think or feel. Jackson&#8217;s mythic life, death and the molestation allegations against him fit right into the confusion and chaos of our times.

In this topsy-turvy, upside-down world it is worthy to consider the question: What if there was another angle to Jackson&#8217;s raison d&#8217;etre? What if the already kooky plot of Jackson&#8217;s life wasn&#8217;t quite as straightforward as it might seem? Enter the wryly brilliant mind of Julien Nitzberg and his bizarre yet fantastical new musical For the Love of a Glove. Nitzberg takes the timeline of Jackson&#8217;s life, based in well-documented music history, and expands the story into surreal absurdity even while consciously weaving in sociological, political and religious commentary. And it&#8217;s all presented and narrated from the perspective of Jackson&#8217;s blinged-out glove.

Without giving away too much of the over-the-top and extremely farcical plot, the glove in question is actually a thinking, speaking, musically gifted alien rescued by Jackson and his brothers after a spaceship crashes to Earth in Gary, Indiana. Set to a satiric, hilarious musical score featuring Nitzberg&#8217;s original lyrics, For the Love of a Glove is an unflinching yet thoughtful parody.

The Bronx-raised son of a Holocaust survivor and writer/director of boundary pushing theater and documentaries, Nitzberg tackles everything from masturbation and homosexuality to religion and racism in Glove. No topic is off limits, and everything is presented with an upbeat pizazz. Its meaty material is tied up in a pretty bow with an incredible singing and dancing cast of 12 gifted actors led by Jerry Minor (Saturday Night Live, HBO&#8217;s Mr. Show) as THRHIL-LHA (aka The Glove) and Eric B. Anthony (Broadway cast of The Lion King, Hairspray and Mary Poppins) as Michael. Choreography was created by two fellows who know the subject well. Cris Judd worked with Jackson for many years on The Dangerous Tour and HIStory Tour, while Bryan Anthony danced as an 11-year-old with the King of Pop, Alfonso Ribeiro and the other Jackson brothers in his infamous 1984 Pepsi commercial. Both bring the signature moves one might expect from a Jackson-themed project.

But the stars here are the 20 incredible life-sized puppets &#8212; created by puppet designer Robin Walsh who has worked for Jim Henson, Disney and Ray Harryhausen. The Japanese bunraku&#8211;style creatures (representing everyone from Emmanuel Lewis and Corey Feldman to Bubbles the Chimp) are ambitious works of art, integrated with live, visible actors that recall the Broadway musical Avenue Q. The top-level production team of composers, choreographers and designers are also joined by costumer Ann Closs-Farley, known for her work on Broadway designing The Pee-Wee Herman Show and Disney&#8217;s Toy Story, The Musical.

Part Peter Pan, part scathing social commentary, part music biography and a fully comedic audience experience, this is no children&#8217;s puppet show; a minimum age of 18 is required for entry. Far from politically correct, in one scene a marionette incarnation of Donny Osmond skewers the Mormon religion with a bubblegum song exposing the church&#8217;s intrinsic racist doctrine.

&#8220;The two villains in the show are Pat Boone and Donny Osmond,&#8221; Nitzberg explains during a rehearsal run of the show. &#8220;The Mormons teach that all black people are cursed. Their teaching &#8212; until 1979 &#8212; was that if you were black you couldn&#8217;t even go into a Mormon temple.&#8221;

So it is with no intended irony that Osmond and his four brothers &#8220;culturally appropriate&#8221; the Jackson 5&#8217;s funky style into their lily white brand of pop, stealing their dance moves, borrowing their wardrobe styles and watering down their Motown rhythms for a squeaky clean caucasian Teen Beat audience.

&#8220;They couldn&#8217;t put Michael on the covers of the teen magazines, they had to put Donny,&#8221; Nitzberg reveals. &#8220;They couldn&#8217;t have &#8216;Win a date with Michael&#8217; because they wouldn&#8217;t sell copies.&#8221; As for Jackson&#8217;s infamous kiddy sleepovers, here they&#8217;re presented as innocent, like something straight out of a &#8217;50s science fiction flick. With this kind of alternate storytelling, even the outlandish is made possible and plausible.

Opening at the newly relocated theater space of the Center for Inquiry West &#8212; a nexus long dedicated to critical thinking, intellectual exploration and avant-garde performances &#8212; the premium seats for this show are front-of-stage in comfortable bean-bag chairs. What better way to enter Jackson&#8217;s Neverland world than on 1970s teen-fad furniture?

Nitzberg says his goal is to eventually take For the Love of a Glove to Broadway, London&#8217;s West End and hopefully on a nationwide tour. With a production as provocative and innovative as this, it is likely to find mainstream success and to attract a cult following to boot. Suspend your disbelief, check your political correctness at the door and go see this off-the-wall show with an open mind while preparing yourself for a comical, culturally warped adventure.

https://www.laweekly.com/a-theatrical-take-on-michael-jacksons-life-thats-beyond-off-the-wall/

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According to their FB, as of 18th Jan they were struggling to fill the 2nd weekend, although the 1st night (Saturday 25th) seems to be sold out.

Another sneak peek of the puppets from For the Love of a Glove and our amazing comic genius star Jerry Minor as Thrihl-Lha, Michael Jackson's glove. Please buy your tickets now! We want to fill up the house on the first two weekends!
 
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Most people in every corner of the world love and respect Michael, and there are many wonderful and very successful tribute shows out there. Why would anyone want to see this? I don&#8217;t get it.
 
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Vile people...

and Robson apparently doesn't find this at all traumatising / inappropriate.

Michael Jackson's Glove Is A Singing Alien In This LA Musical Tackling Sex Abuse Allegations

Writer/director Julien Nitzberg thinks most biopics are bad and cheesy. His attempts not to make one of those about Michael Jackson led him to create a satirical musical where Jackson is controlled by his white glove, which is also an alien. The result: For The Love Of A Glove. (Listen to one of the songs here.)

The show came out of a request by a cable network for Nitzberg, who's written biopics for HBO and other networks, to write one about Michael Jackson.

"I said, 'Well, how are you going to deal with all the more serious issues &#8212; like the child molestation?' And they had no answer," Nitzberg said.

The network didn't want to delve into Jackson's alleged sexual abuse of children, telling Nitzberg that it was due to Jackson being found not guilty when allegations against him went to court.

Nitzberg's idea for dealing with it: alien glove. That's because you need a sympathetic character that makes logical sense to write a good drama, Nitzberg said, and he didn't think Jackson fit the bill.

"You can't explain in a normal, dramatic, logical storyline why this guy, who's a millionaire, suddenly is adopting a monkey and walking around with a monkey wearing matching outfits. You can't explain sleepovers with kids. You can't explain why he tried to buy the Elephant Man's bones," Nitzberg said.

So his solution was to do a project embracing the weirdness and turning up the absurdity. The cable network execs laughed at the idea of a sensible version of Jackson listening to his glove, instead asking for a standard biopic about the singer.

"I was like, 'I don't think morally I can do this,'" Nitzberg said.

So Nitzberg's idea didn't become a cable biopic, but now it is coming to life as a satirical musical.

THE ISSUES

The show uses comedy while also looking at why Jackson turned out the way he did.

"We're showing what made him a troubled person, by using this metaphorical alien," Nitzberg said. "We basically move the bad part about Michael Jackson's life, the responsibility, onto the glove, from him."

But Nitzberg said the show doesn't absolve Jackson of responsibility for his actions.

"It's saying these things are wrong, but creating a new character paradigm where our Michael can comment on real-life Michael."

It tackles his background raised as a Jehovah's Witness, being sexually repressed, and facing racism.

"I want to leave the audience with something deeper and more interesting than 'then, Michael bought Bubbles,'" Nitzberg said.

Controversy isn't something Nitzberg's afraid of &#8212; his last musical was a buddy comedy about 9/11, which won an L.A. Weekly award for Best Musical of the Year.

Beyond the aliens, the show also uses singing group the Osmonds as villains. It looks at issues around cultural appropriation, with the all-white singers changing their act in the wake of the success of the Jackson Five. The show also contrasts the forces of the Jackson Five's background as Jehovah's Witnesses with the Osmonds being Mormons.

The show drew attention early on over headlines saying that Johnny Depp was producing it &#8212; that's not true, Nitzberg said, but the producers do include Sam Sarkar, CEO of Depp's production company Infinitum Nihil.

Suddenly, everyone had this idea that Johnny Depp was at every show," Nitzberg said.

THE DANCING
Choreographers Cris Judd (aka Jennifer Lopez's ex-husband) and Bryan Anthony worked on For The Love Of A Glove; both men worked with Jackson. Judd danced with Jackson for years, including on the Dangerous and HIStory tours, while Anthony was in Jackson's 1984 Pepsi commercial &#8212; the one where Jackson's hair caught on fire.
Judd is best friends with dancer/choreographer Wade Robson, who made sexual abuse allegations against Jackson in the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland. So Judd asked Robson about whether to do the show, Nitzberg said, and Robson told him to go ahead.

"[Cris] understood the show was for people who love Michael Jackson, but also a critique of what he actually is accused of doing," Nitzberg said.

Judd used his deep knowledge of Jackson's dance moves to turn them into comedic commentary through choreography.


THE PUPPETS

Oh, did we forget to talk about the giant puppets used throughout the show? While adult Jackson is a live actor, many of the characters are portrayed using puppets. That's particularly true in the first act, focusing on the Jackson Five.

They brought in Robin Walsh, who's also worked on puppets for Men In Black and Team America. One of the reasons for the show to use puppets: the adult nature of the material.

"[Nitzberg] felt like there's no other way to do it, because you can't get kids to do what needs to happen in the show," Walsh said.

While the show has what Walsh described as a crazy, silly story, she said it's a ruse to talk about deeper issues.

"The nice thing about puppetry is, since its inception, it's a really good tool to say things in a way that humans can't."

The puppets themselves are inspired by the Japanese bunraku style of puppets, standing around four feet tall. To make sure that the cast could all handle it, some puppetry was included in the audition process &#8212; then they put the performers in puppet camp for a week and a half, Walsh said. That included puppet theory, puppet movement exercises, hand mime, and more.

The cast also serving as puppeteers meant the show took twice as long to rehearse as a normal show, according to Nitzberg.

How do you make puppets dance? The puppets are actually attached to the actors, allowing them to dance and move like the Jackson Five, Walsh said. The choreographers looked at the puppets and came up with dance moves that the performers could do intuitively.

The show also utilizes hand puppets to represent the glove (and his glove alien compatriots), and while this show may not exactly be Hamlet, it also makes use of a puppet show within the show.

THE MUSIC

As you may have guessed, this show is highly unauthorized and far from a jukebox musical. But they still wanted to evoke the feeling of Jackson's music throughout, so Nitzberg worked with composers to give it a pop sensibility.

He had trouble finding the right composers who could give him something that didn't sound like musical theater, but found a team that could produce what he wanted. That team includes Nicole Morier, who's written songs for Britney Spears, Selena Gomez, and Tom Jones.

Listen to the introduction to Jackson's glove in the song "The World's Greatest Superstar," sung by actor/comedian Jerry Minor &#8212; he plays the glove:

And if you want that jukebox musical version of the show, the officially endorsed MJ opens on Broadway in July.

https://laist.com/2020/01/24/michael-jackson-musical-for-the-love-of-a-glove.php
 
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myosotis;4280077 said:
Vile people... and Robson apparently doesn't find this at all traumatising / inappropriate.

I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised to see him attending the première. I hope the Estate has their legal team monitoring this event.
 
Yeah, that fool Wade can give Chris his blessing for it because he know the allegation are lies (Chris know it as well). He pretend to be upset over Dave Chappell yet giving a blessing to mock play over a GLOVE. Anyone with a brains still believe this fool is just an idiot. Keep it coming Wade. You expose yourself over and over.
 
Ex dancer turns his back on MJ for ‘Love for a Glove’ with Wade! Man, I don’t have the words, just pure anger again... why do this to poor MJ for the sake of money and attention! It’s just greed!.MJ gave nothing but love and hope to everyone. He doesn’t deserve this!
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wonderouzmj;4280158 said:
Ex dancer turns his back on MJ for &#8216;Love for a Glove&#8217; with Wade! Man, I don&#8217;t have the words, just pure anger again... why do this to poor MJ for the sake of money and attention! It&#8217;s just greed!.MJ gave nothing but love and hope to everyone. He doesn&#8217;t deserve this!
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Bitchies!!!
 
From Twitter, a guy (J Walker) at 'Sunnyandmildmedia.com (who produce promo videos - and probably were involved with the vids promoting FTLOAG) writes:

Stoked today's @forloveofaglove ad in @latimes @culturemonster hits above the fold and next to
@Oprah who should really see this show which opens on set designer Andrea Keller's vision of O's #Montecito neighbor the #NEVERLAND ranch

(It's under the FTLOAG twitter feed)

The tagline for 'Sunnyandmildmedia': 'Content with a conscience'. Hypocritical much?

https://sunnyandmildmedia.com/


(The most 'likes' any twitter post has received in their promo thread is ....29. Most posts have zero 'likes' Oh dear. :violin: :popcorn: )

---------------------------------------------

aaand '50%off tickets Los Angeles' were selling tix at 50% off (ie for $25), from 20th January...

BUY 50% OFF TICKETS NOW "FOR THE LOVE OF A GLOVE: THE MUSICAL" $25
Mon Jan 27, 2020 - Mon Feb 10, 2020
at The Center for Inquiry West, Los Angeles
An unauthorized musical fable about Michael Jackson's life, as told by his glove. #ad

via wontix/ wonderific tickets
https://wontix.com/losangeles/For-the-Love-of-a-Glove-The-Musical/202999/wontix/gs
 
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A few sentences from a review (the remainder doesn't say anything new):
They are really trying to push this to Broadway, but I'm not seeing any 'buzz' about this anywhere, not even in tabloids or in the MJ-hating entertainment media.

How lovely to know that this show finds the KKK so hysterically funny! :ranting:
And what exactly is 'You've Got To Be There'?

Clearly, these idiots all completely believe LN :(
They are going to look very stupid in due course. Interesting how the uneducated, who have never read a court deposition in their lives, seem to think that it's Michael's talent that makes fans believe in his innocence. The depth of their prejudice and ignorance never fails to astound me, even a year after LN screened.


.....'In lesser hands, this could have all gone terribly wrong, but I&#8217;m happy to report that Glove goes terribly right. It&#8217;s a risky business to create a new mythology based several pre-existing ones. No matter how much we wanted to believe Michael&#8217;s extraordinary talent somehow made the allegations against him suspect, the documentary Finding Neverland relieved that scenario of any shred of plausible deniability. One might have also worried that the incontrovertible testimony of the molested young men could drain Glove of its comic potential, but the show is hilarious. Michael Jackson&#8217;s actual trajectory was already so weird and improbable that Nitzberg&#8217;s imagined origin story feels as much like a hypothesis as a fantasy. The show has the odd but comforting effect of lifting for a few hours the cringe we have come to unavoidably feel thinking of the King of Pop (at least for someone like yours truly, born exactly one month after Jackson.)

That such theatrical legerdemain works without the actual music of Michael Jackson speaks volumes about the composers. Drew Erickson, Nicole Morier and Max Townsley wrote a score that is part homage, part parody, and all ear-wormy. One ballad, &#8220;True Love&#8221; is as sweet as &#8220;You&#8217;ve Got to Be There,&#8221; and doubles as an anthem for the delicious thematic twist near the end that you won&#8217;t see coming (pun intended) but should.'
and:

'Among the show&#8217;s sharper conceits is paralleling the Jackson/Osmond rivalry to that between Mozart and Salieri &#8212; if one of them had been Jehovah&#8217;s Witness and the other Mormon. (Reputedly, Osmond has a good sense of humor, and wouldn&#8217;t take it too personally &#8212; he was after all, no more in control of his early career than Michael.) The appropriation of black music by white entertainers is one of many politico-cultural barbs Nitzberg pulls off without being heavy-handed, including an opening number about Indiana&#8217;s hooded history that starts the show off hysterikkkally.'...................

and
'...How many times in life do you get to see a musical with a song that rhymes &#8220;victim&#8221; and &#8220;dictum?&#8221; For that alone, it should go to Broadway'.


https://la.epeak.in/?p=791841
 
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This is so ridiculous that I&#8217;m not even upset. :popcorn:

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The entire existence of this "musical" and its creators makes me sick to my stomach. What kind of world is it when sickos like this can just dream up such nonsense while people clamour to become involved in it? ARGH!!!
 
Mikky Dee;4280510 said:
The entire existence of this "musical" and its creators makes me sick to my stomach. What kind of world is it when sickos like this can just dream up such nonsense while people clamour to become involved in it? ARGH!!!

Look up that Nitzberg dude on Wikipedia. His previous work includes a 9/11 inspired musical by the name of
&#8220;The Beastly Bombing or A Terrible Tale of Terrorists Tamed by the Tangles of True Love&#8221;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julien_Nitzberg#The_Beastly_Bombing_(2006)

He&#8217;s being offensive on purpose, it&#8217;s the career choice of talentless people.
 
The entire existence of this "musical" and its creators makes me sick to my stomach. What kind of world is it when sickos like this can just dream up such nonsense while people clamour to become involved in it? ARGH!!!

The only thing that gives me small comfort is that they - like many of the media who comment on Reed's doc. (especially in recent months) persist in calling it 'Finding Neverland'. That is emblematic of how much research they do, and how much they are actually 'engaged' with this nonsense. Sadly, it doesn't stop similarly idiotic folk believing their articles.
 
Extracts from another review, which appears in 'The Compton Herald' which according to its 'biography' has a 'founder, publisher and editor-in-chief' who is black.

https://comptonherald.org/about-the-publisher/

'Compton Herald is a digital media publication providing clear, fair and current news, information and commentary about Compton, the Los Angeles metropolitan area of California, and the world.'

The review author is G Thomas: Kevin G. Thomas is a veteran Los Angeles-area freelance journalist who has written for the Los Angeles Wave and the L.A. Watts Times. He is a former educator, with B.A. degrees in theology and marketing.

Theatrical fable, &#8216;For the Love of a Glove: The Musical,&#8217; magnifies dark humor, idiosyncracy in Michael Jackson&#8217;s iconic life

..............His controversial life filled with sensitive issues such as child abuse, religious dogma, his questionable sexuality, racism, and his notoriously bizarre behavior which made him an enigma, is displayed and explained with dark humor, satire, and moments of absurdity that match the bafflement that most of us feel when we try to understand the megastar, who grandly and unquestionably garnered the title, King of Pop, without a murmur of protest.

...............This story is not politically correct and may not appeal to the older crowd, which at its core, contain raunchy sex scenes and coarse language, yet by the final act are readily cleaned up with a healthy dose of sanctification and righteousness.

The songs in this play depict the twisted and confused life of the outlier, a young boy forced into adulthood at an early age, who had to grope with the fickleness of stardom with none of the safeguards of religion. God is mentioned but His presence is not felt.

........... the second half nose dives into bewildering events with equally bewildering explanations, such as Michael&#8217;s obsession with young boys, his chimpanzee Bubbles, and his addiction to sleeping pills.

Theater-goers will definitely have something to discuss afterwards as the play seeks to push the audience&#8217;s sensibilities to and fro &#8211; one moment enamored with Jackson, another perplexed by him. It truly reflects what fans felt about his intriguing life.

https://comptonherald.org/theatre-m...2Jxku1kBoCbN6hjTs5De7tADwYD1jzAZzgxJnU6_leqRA
 
Not sure to make of this. When I heard of the concept , i was like ...Right ...okay...:coockoo::scratch:
 
The reviews are as vulgar and ill-informed as the production. After reading this review I had to go and scrape it off my shoe.
It was somewhat reassuring in the sense that I'm dubious that this production would find it's way into any decent theatre.
Depp has of course confirmed that he had no involvement with this production.
(It's translated from the original German via Google translate, hence the clunkiness of the English.)

A musical about Michael Jackson's white glitter glove, which has eyes, can speak and tells the audience the most intimate details about the life of the pop star - starting from the family's religious-homophobic madness to suppressed sexuality to Michael's desire to finally become as white as possible his competitor Donny Osmond? The fact that Johnny Depp co-produced the stage production &#8220;For the Love of a Glove&#8221; in L.A. is just one of many proofs that the piece is exceptional.

Already in his first stage work "The Beastly Bombing" in 2006, Nitzberg proved that he had a feel for the big issues of our time, with which he generated maximum media attention: At that time he wrote an "operetta" in the style of Gilbert & Sullivan over two Al Qaeda terrorists and two U.S. neo-Nazis, each trying to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. The plan fails and the group of four flees, meets the US President, a busy Jesus and a pedophile priest. In addition, à la «South Park» pretty much everything is pulled through the cocoa that you can only imagine. Even then, aspects of racist and religious madness and what it does to society were central.

.......................... The anti-Semitism vs. debate At the time, satire even reached the New York Times and various TV stations. And brought many headlines to the play, which led to a likewise well-received European premiere in Amsterdam in 2009 and to the inclusion of the work in various exhibitions and books; very recent in the &#8220;Cambridge Companion to Operetta&#8221;, years ago also in &#8220;Glitter and be Gay: The authentic operetta and its gay admirers&#8221;. Of course, &#8220;The Beastly Bombing&#8221; won several theater awards. Composer Roger Neill later wrote the music for "20th Century Women", "Mozart in the Jungle" and the gay classic "Beginners" with Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer.


Michael himself (played by Eric B. Anthony) is a doll in the first part, controlled by his brutal father (Ogie Banks) and his ruthless manager Berry Gordy (Daniel Mills), in the second part when he breaks away from the Jackson Five and starting a solo career, Michael is a &#8220;real&#8221; actor, not a puppet anymore.

.............................. (Redacted for the sake of decency)

For me, the trip there was definitely worth it. Even if the production directed by Nitzberg itself is not yet perfect and sometimes sags, it shines with a linguistic brilliance and intelligence that is unique. This corresponds to the fabulous performers who serve all clichés and turn them upside down at the same time.

It will be interesting to see how the piece will go on. In any case, &#8220;Beat It&#8221; will have a new meaning for all ages if you have seen &#8220;For the Love of a Glove&#8221;. ...........

Further evidence for Nitzberg's genius is that LGBTIQ topics are interwoven in all of this and that the problem of pedophilia is addressed without the satire being broken.

In the long line of LGBTIQ musicals, old and new, &#8220;For the Love of a Glove&#8221; certainly occupies a special position because it is intersectional and the subject of homosexuality is always linked to other aspects that lead to exclusion. The fact that in this production it is blacks themselves who play the parody about racism with absurd exaggeration gives the piece a double and triple force.

https://mannschaft.com/2020/02/01/d...FVYb3zfalpdL2B4oO9hxP4cClxwdNDKK3-TP7oPRD5H8U
 
Review from LA Times.

I'll be interested to see if this show is covered in any 'Discovery' done by the MJ Estate if Wade 's case goes to trial. (ie in terms of Wade agreeing the concept/ stage treatment). I'm sure the jury would be keen to see what Wade views as comedy. (and I wonder if Feldman knows he appears in this.)

Too soon for a Michael Jackson musical parody? &#8216;For the Love of a Glove&#8217; lets it rip

A spotlight centered on a sparkling, silver glove with cartoon-like eyeballs and a red mouth.

&#8220;The truth must be told, I have to be bold,&#8221; he sang, with a smooth, breathy tenor. &#8220;I&#8217;m the bad ... who made Michael Jackson the world&#8217;s greatest superstar.&#8221;
This was the opening moment of &#8220;For the Love of a Glove,&#8221; a new expletive-laced musical parody playing its world-premiere run through March 8 at the Center for Inquiry West in Los Angeles. The production &#8212; which made headlines in November when it was widely misreported that Johnny Depp is a producer (he is not) &#8212; spans the early years of Jackson&#8217;s career, from the perspective of his anthropomorphized accessory.

&#8220;The glove is a way to deal with Michael&#8217;s Jungian shadows,&#8221; said director Julien Nitzberg, who also wrote the show&#8217;s book and lyrics. &#8220;This is not, like, dumb comedy that&#8217;s making fun of Michael. It&#8217;s actually a very complex piece dealing with racism, cultural appropriation, sexual subjugation of certain religions, but in a humorous way.&#8221;

Not everyone will agree, as &#8220;For the Love of a Glove&#8221; doesn&#8217;t pull any punches. The second song &#8212; about how Jackson&#8217;s home state of Indiana boasted the largest Ku Klux Klan membership in history &#8212; had performers harmonizing in white hoods and, at one point, simulating lynching in a dance move.

The third song explained how parents who violently discipline their children are performing an act of love rooted in religion. &#8220;When God let them torture his only son, he was showing us how parenting oughta be done,&#8221; sang Jackson&#8217;s father. (The kids are represented by life-size puppets in an effort to play child beatings for laughs.)

&#8220;Oh, my God,&#8221; one woman said with a laugh during the opening-night performance, adding an unprintable variation of &#8220;this is so messed up&#8221; after the eyebrow-raising, head-shaking, R-rated satire. This is the stuff of &#8220;Family Guy&#8221; cutaways and &#8220;Saturday Night Live&#8221; sketches that don&#8217;t make it out of the writers room. But can these gasp-inducing gags fill a 2 ½-hour musical?

After a gospel hymn about Jackson being a Jehovah&#8217;s Witness &#8212; the show contends that believers think masturbation leads to homosexuality because the person is being pleasured by a hand not belonging to the opposite sex &#8212; a lot of time was spent explaining the origin of Jackson&#8217;s glove. It turns out he&#8217;s a scintillating alien named Thrihl-Lha (played by comedian Jerry Minor) who accidentally crashed into Earth.

Thrihl-Lha and his four siblings feed off the bodily fluids of virgins and have the power to infuse even its most tone-deaf providers with unmatched musical talent. The discovery has Jackson&#8217;s father seeing dollar signs and persuading the creatures to masquerade as gloves worn by five of his kids.

The story goes on to attribute all the actions of Jackson (played by Eric B. Anthony) &#8212; acclaimed and alleged &#8212; on Thrihl-Lha. He&#8217;s the source of Michael&#8217;s singing voice, the creator of his dance moves, the unnamed co-writer of his hits (mainstream pop songs instead of politically charged tunes, which is what he really wanted to perform, apparently).

In &#8220;For the Love of a Glove,&#8221; it&#8217;s Disco Hamburger Helper&#8217;s idea to host sleepovers with boys so that his starving siblings can suck the children&#8217;s blood while they sleep. Jackson repeatedly rejects the suggestion and instead offers his chimp Bubbles, but eventually he agrees and a sleepover scene features puppet versions of Emmanuel Lewis and Corey Feldman.

Nitzberg, who also penned the 2006 political parody &#8220;The Beastly Bombing&#8221; &#8212; told The Times that the production has the green light from &#8220;Leaving Neverland&#8221; subject Wade Robson, a friend of the show&#8217;s choreographer, Cris Judd.


By rooting Jackson&#8217;s celebrated and controversial qualities to a glove, Nitzberg said, the story can be critical about how his family&#8217;s strict religious practices, and his Mozart-Salieri rivalry with frenemy Donny Osmond, may have affected him. (Displays in the lobby and a director&#8217;s note in the program stress Nitzberg&#8217;s research.
It&#8217;s a supposition that, at first, seems to let Jackson off the hook. When Thrihl-Lha hits Brooke Shields in the face numerous times, Jackson simply tells her, &#8220;It&#8217;s a naughty glove.&#8221;

Here, the King of Pop is blissfully ignorant and easily swayed; he cannot be blamed for harming another person because it&#8217;s not him actually doing it. But in real life, because Jackson wasn&#8217;t brainwashed by an alien, the audience is left to contemplate the atrocities of which he is accused.

The approach gets convoluted as &#8220;For the Love of a Glove&#8221; offers other commentary. The show also skewers the music industry&#8217;s &#8220;Pat Boone-ing&#8221; practices (white musicians rerecording songs first performed by black artists), Americans&#8217; affinity to play the victim in absolutely any situation, and a culture that all but requires black men to, when angry, employ a calm &#8220;Diana Ross voice&#8221; so they don&#8217;t seem threatening.

And when Jackson learns of his chronic skin condition and contemplates trying brighteners, he&#8217;s told his life would be easier if he were to become white. (The number about how police officers and old ladies will treat him better elicited laughs, but there was something unsettling about a nearly all-white audience chuckling at jokes about black male genitalia.)

An eleventh-hour plot point put the glove on his deathbed. &#8220;Peter Pan&#8221; may tell theatergoers to save Tinker Bell with their applause, but in &#8220;For the Love of a Glove&#8221; Jackson crassly asked the audience to masturbate with him.

&#8220;Grab your crotches with me, please!&#8221; he pleaded before putting his hand down his pants.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainme...ackson-musical-parody-for-the-love-of-a-glove
 
Is this really what those people want to be remembered for, if future generations look back on their work?
 
I'm glad that Prince is no longer at this University....
From FTLOAG FB page:

I'll be on KXLU tonight from 10-12 talking about For the Love of a Glove with Señor Amor on the Molotov Cocktail Hour show. Joining me will be Andrew Ableson and Suzanne Nichols! Listen in- 88.9FM or https://kxlu.com


KXLU is a non-commercial, educational station broadcasting from the Westchester campus of Loyola Marymount University at an assigned carrier of 88.9 megahertz and an assigned radiating power of 3000 watts. Owned by the Board of Trustees of Loyola Marymount University, KXLU is operated in the public interest by its student, faculty, and volunteer staff.

https://kxlu.com/about/

(Apparently Nitzberg is (maybe / maybe just another joke) writing a biography of this 'DJ'. Extraordinary what passes as 'education' in LA.

Thirty years on, Señor and Cyrano have weathered this fame, persisting through changing fads in music and their frequent marriage and divorces to stay together. Despite high dollar offers from almost every other major radio station in the U.S. and Canada, they have kept true to KXLU where their show the Molotov Cocktail Hour has been consistently Arbitron rated as one of the top five radio shows in Southern California&#8217;s vibrant and competitive Tiki Music Format. And more amazingly- the majority of what they play is still culled from that original collection of LP&#8217;s and 45&#8217;s first bequeathed an innocent young immigrant boy by the friendly philanthropists of Shriner Local 57.

Penned by Julien Nitzberg from his upcoming biography: &#8220;And His Mother Called Him Señor&#8221;

https://kxlu.com/dj/molotov-cocktail-hour/
 
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">ok wow! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MJFam?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MJFam</a> <br>someone pointed out on FB that gave me the chills we all know these photos right? we all know what they represent but did we think who is the gunman here? it&#39;s the same one that is now betraying him with that play and with Wade this has a whole different meaning <a href="https://t.co/4Ms6X3OIol">pic.twitter.com/4Ms6X3OIol</a></p>&mdash; Yuli Erdreich (@YulifanofMJ) <a href="https://twitter.com/YulifanofMJ/status/1226039475928731648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 8, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
Is this really what those people want to be remembered for, if future generations look back on their work?

Nitzberg has a radio interview (with KROQ) up on their FB page (not worth listening to, so not linked here.) Regarding audience reaction, he says that some people love it (the show) but 'we've had some people be pretty pi$$ed off; the Michael Jackson fanatics have sent, like, death threats...'

These anti-mj folk (Reed was another one) really bask in their 'death threats', LOL. I guess it gives them some self-importance in life.

From what I can see online (next to nothing at all in comments on FB, Twitter etc), 99.99% of fans have completely ignored this crock of sh1t, and rightly so.
 
Nitzberg has a radio interview (with KROQ) up on their FB page (not worth listening to, so not linked here.) Regarding audience reaction, he says that some people love it (the show) but 'we've had some people be pretty pi$$ed off; the Michael Jackson fanatics have sent, like, death threats...'

These anti-mj folk (Reed was another one) really bask in their 'death threats', LOL. I guess it gives them some self-importance in life.

From what I can see online (next to nothing at all in comments on FB, Twitter etc), 99.99% of fans have completely ignored this crock of sh1t, and rightly so.

Yeah they just use those supposed "threats" as a promotional tool.

Dr Conrad Murray - the man who actually killed Michael Jackson - has been able to freely live his life on this Earth for years since he killed MJ. If he can do it then Dan Reed and the people behind this amateur dramatics show have little to worry about. Except being cancelled when the tickets don't sell.
 
Nitzberg has a radio interview (with KROQ) up on their FB page (not worth listening to, so not linked here.) Regarding audience reaction, he says that some people love it (the show) but 'we've had some people be pretty pi$$ed off; the Michael Jackson fanatics have sent, like, death threats...'

These anti-mj folk (Reed was another one) really bask in their 'death threats', LOL. I guess it gives them some self-importance in life.

From what I can see online (next to nothing at all in comments on FB, Twitter etc), 99.99% of fans have completely ignored this crock of sh1t, and rightly so.

Please, every time anything remotely controversial happens there are death threats. Hell, I got me some and I'm a literal nobody :D
Besides, no one seems to care about that dumpster fire. I think they hoped for more clout for being so distasteful and downright disrespectful and when it didn't happen they claim to be getting death threats to get any attention. Pathetic and sad
 
The "death threats" claim is getting old. Dan said Safechuck and Robson got them and were off social media, but they weren't. People claimed Jordan and Evan got death threats but they were fine (Evan killed himself). Murray walking around freely.

It's become the thing-Gayle and Oprah claiming death threats because of Kobe. The white lady who wrote the book about Latinas got death threats. CRY WOLF. No sympathy from me because they're all lying through their teeth.
 
This horrible thing has extended bookings to 19th April, playing Fridays, Sat, Sun to 22nd March, and Sat+Suns to 19th April, 'because they've been selling out'.

There are some very strange audience's in the world. People can be so inexplicably disgusting.
 
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