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Passing Strange
Book and lyrics by Stew
Music by Stew and Heidi Rodewald Directed by and created in collaboration with Annie Dorsen
Starring Stew, with Daniel Breaker, De'Adre Aziza, Elsa Davis, Colman Domingo, Chad Goodridge, and Rebecca Naomi Jones
Belasco Theatre
111 West 44th Street
passingstrangeonbroadway.com
 Stew and Daniel Breaker in PASSING STRANGE; photo by Carol Rosegg Passing Strange is largely the creation of a guy named Stew; he wrote the book and lyrics, co-wrote the music (with Heidi Rodewald), and serves as onstage musical narrator of this semi-autobiograhical show about a middle-class black kid from L.A. who goes to live in Amsterdam and Berlin in order to experience life raw and real. To give his new bohemian friends in Europe what he thinks they want, the Stew character (called “Youth”) presents himself as an oppressed, disenfranchised African American, whereas his actual history and upbringing are just about as comfortably bourgeois as can be.
The Youth's dogged insistence upon posing as someone he's not is the crux of the show. For example, the first time we see and hear his mother (played by the wonderful Eisa Davis), she speaks in an exaggerated, stereotypical, lower-class “black” dialect. Then, when Stew off-handedly remarks that she didn't really sound that way at all, she suddenly drops the jive and starts talking in her own voice. (This gets a huge laugh from the audience, but it makes a serious point.) Later, the Youth trumpets his independence by refusing to go home to L.A. for Christmas, only to find that his too-cool-for-words European pals have every intention of spending the holidays with their own families. The climax of the show comes when this rebellious kid realizes too late the cost of denying his true identity and emotions.
Passing Strange is packed with pulse-raising rock tunes that help tell the tale even though they don't necessarily serve the usual narrative and character-defining functions of musical theater songs. Stew, Rodewald, and the rest of the musicians are situated around the stage, sometimes half-receded into it via trap doors so that only their upper bodies are visible. (It's a great effect.) The aforementioned light wall, designed by Kevin Adams and David Korins, is so expressive that it functions almost as another character in the show. When those brilliantly colored fluorescents are turned up full, the wall is something to see -- and the amount of light and heat that emanates from it at these moments is so great, you can catch a quick sun tan.
With such evocative songs as “Sole Brother,” “Must've Been High,” “We Just Had Sex,” “Surface,” “Damage,” and “Love Like That,” the show is an adrenaline-infused rock concert that also happens to tell the gripping story of a young man's search for himself. Super-talented Daniel Breaker is terrific as the Youth, managing to be charming and sympathetic even when he's behaving like a pretentious little shit, which is most of the time. The rest of the ensemble cast members expertly limn various characters in L.A, Amsterdam, and Berlin, with Colman Domingo deserving an especially lusty shout-out for his priceless takeoff on European performance art as practiced by a “body liberationist.” The staging by Annie Dorsen, who created the piece in collaboration with Stew and Rodewald, is simple but tremendously effective, as is Karole Armitage's choreography. In a program note, Stew writes that “passing strange” has many meanings, one of which “applies in the context of people 'passing' for what they are not – culturally, psychologically, and so on....A large part of the show is about stereotypes – self imposed, unconscious stereotypes -- and that's where it gets scary and dangerous.” These issues have been tackled before in the theater but perhaps never so deeply, intelligently, and wittily in a musical.
Though Passing Strange garnered mostly stellar reviews, it may have a tough go of it on Broadway because it boasts no major stars, it's not based on a popular movie, and its subject matter, theme, and effect are not easy to describe in a sentence or two. But just as the producers took a huge chance in bringing this show to a mainstream audience, you are advised to return the favor and take a chance on a musical unlike anything you've experienced before.
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