Todrick Hall’s New Musical ‘Midnight’ Sparks Massive Online Backlash For Its Problematic Plot

A new off-Broadway musical from multi-hyphenate entertainer Todrick Hall, premiering Thursday (Oct. 15), is drawing attention for all the wrong reasons, including a problematic plot, which involves a slave falling in love with a white man.

via: Queerty

YouTuber, singer, and Drag Race fixture Todrick Hall has been in the game long enough to weather several controversies. His new off-Broadway opera, however, has viewers asking bigger questions. Namely: when writing a slave narrative, do artists have a responsibility to not fall into the same traumatic old tropes? Or is showing the trauma just a way of being honest?

In “Midnight,” Hall stars as Rail, a young Black slave who catches the eye of another slave named Lily Rose. A snippet of “Pretty Eyes,” a song from the show in which Lily Rose tries to swoon Rail, received positive reviews online and built up hype for the production — that is, until the full context came to light. Although Rail doesn’t have strong feelings for Lily Rose, he eventually gives in, marries her and impregnates her. Things take an unexpected turn when Rail has an affair with Richard, a white man who is the fiancé of Rail’s owner.

Hall has called the show—which he co-produced with Sydney Sweeney’s man Scooter Braun—“a dream come true” and the most “ambitious project of [his] career.”

But for many Black viewers, it’s more like a nightmare. “This is three hours of Black trauma,” as one TikToker recently phrased it. Others are comparing the show (unfavorably) to Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Appropriate.

But while those plays deal with slavery in a modern-day context, Hall’s work puts viewers right in the mix. And while slavery must be dealt with as a part of history, some viewers are not thrilled with Hall’s treatment of the topic—specifically the part where Rail and his love interest start falling into certain stereotypes.

“His master teaches him how to swim,” Kristin explains, “how to read, how to write. And he becomes so grateful that he’s learning these things…” Meanwhile, Rail’s wife, Lily-Rose, gets pregnant.

The reality of the situation would, of course, have been far less romantic. From what critics have told us about Midnight, it seems to gloss over the fact that the modern concept of consent between slaves and their white owners often popularized in fiction, did not exist—a chilling dynamic that Black scholars are intimately familiar with.

Some audience members are definitely picking up what Hall is putting down. “I thought it was one of the best new original musicals I’ve seen in the last 10 years,” one viewer said. “My friend said they made major revisions from what he saw in March that made it much stronger.”

Others felt that the discussion of “taboo” topics was earned. And pretty much every viewer agrees that the cast is doing outstanding work bringing the show to life.

Hall himself recently responded to the criticisms in his own video. “I was already starring in Anxiety: The Musical, because I knew it was the day my musical would be reviewed,” he said yesterday.

He saw Kristin’s video, responded, and made plans to meet with her. “I’m a sponge,” he says. “I want to learn what people have to say. It might not fundamentally change the bones of the musical that I’ve created…I knew this musical might be divisive and was set in a very controversial time period.”

Hall also argued that it was a “complete assumption” that the show couldn’t start conversations or change how people vote. “We can never say how art and music is going to effect/inspire someone,” he wrote.

In another video, a TikToker mouthed “Todrick, what is wrong with you?” after realizing “Pretty Eyes” was actually from a “SL@VE PLAY.”

Again, Hall jumped into the comments to defend his work. “Nothing is wrong with me,” he wrote. “I’m out here creating art that causes conversation and selling out shows. One of the only black composers creating work in nyc, putting money in the pockets of black actors who are enjoying the work and storytelling that they are doing.”

Although his art is causing plenty of conversation, some Black TikTokers, including @wyettsworld, argue that any conversation about slavery that portrays slaves and slave masters getting along is wrong.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with that man,” another pop culture commentator said. “… I’m tired of these types of stories. This is not accurate to history.”

This isn’t Hall’s first time facing scrutiny and legal woes. The YouTuber was criticized for creating parodies and sketches that have made caricatures of Black women and LGBTQ+ people, and was accused of failing to pay dancers on his staff. He settled a lawsuit in 2023 from an ex-assistant who accused him of harassment and not paying him his full wages, and he was ordered to pay over $100,000 in a default judgment in 2022 after he didn’t respond to a lawsuit accusing him of unpaid rent. Speaking of which, his former assistant is now, predictably, trashing Midnight on his own page.

But the discussion around Hall’s musical brings up bigger artistic questions: when telling slavery stories and other traumatic historical narratives, as we must, what is the responsibility to the viewer, and to history? For queer Black writers specifically, how can trauma be shown onstage without retraumatizing the Black queer audience?

Hall’s project is certainly ambitious, and sometimes ambition can create a complex response. For viewers whon are interested in other Black stories on and off Broadway, there are also other options this fall. Wanted, a musical based on the real story of Black Victorian outlaws Mary and Martha Clark, is opening on Broadway soon, as well as School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play and Sarah Jones’ America, Who Hurt You?

Art exists to push boundaries and, in some cases, make viewers uncomfortable with the brutal facts of history and society. But when that art starts rewriting history in favor of harmful stereotypes, that’s when things start to get messy.