Sundance: "Passing Strange Soars"

Film.com gives Spike Lee's Passing Strange film a solid A, calling it "a beautiful effort".

"Going to see this will be like heading to Broadway for a night. Spike Lee, to his credit, realized the beauty of the musical was right there on stage, no further tinkering needed. Spike used 14 cameras at once to capture a musical like it's never been done before."

If it's really this good, perhaps we can hope not only for greater success for the Passing Strange film, but also for a new appreciation for filmed musicals. Broadway prices are outrageous, and it would be so great if those who can't afford it or can't get to New York were given the chance to enjoy more fierce Broadway entertainment.

Let us now have a moment for Passing Strange. It was one of the few great new musicals that Broadway has seen in years. It's single win tonight at the Tony's is a real shame. It deserved more.

Review: Passing Strange

“What IS Passing Strange?” This is the question that many friends have asked upon hearing that I’ve seen the show four times now, and loved it each time more than the last. And even after several viewings, it’s not a simple question to answer. This two-and-a-half hour trip through the mind, musings, and memories of a guy named Stew is more rock concert than Broadway musical, and more visceral current of experience than straightforward story.

What it is about, to boil it way down, is the coming of age experience of a middle class black kid from L.A. From his rejection of the beige-toned suburban life, through the cafes of Amsterdam, into the underground art scene of Berlin, the story is a sort of historical fiction based on Stew’s own experiences traveling abroad in his youth.

Though Passing Strange isn’t an outright political piece, politics played a noteworthy role in the creation of the piece. Observe the word of Stew:

We have GWBush to thank for this play. Seriously. When I found out that he had never been to Europe in his youth (or in his adulthood until he becme prez!!!) I immediately knew I wanted to write a play about a kid who wanted to go to europe. That fact about Bush said a lot to me about America's lack of interest in anything foreign except that which it can exploit (always to exploit – never to learn from). Can you imagine an uber-privileged billionaire's son from any other country that would not have been curious enough to travel to a foreign country or two or 3 or 20? Especially when you're talking the kind of money where you already OWN a few airplanes yourself? As someone whose experience abroad informed and shaped my very being and consciousness about everything from sexuality, politics, culture, language and human nature, I became obsessed with this factoid and decided this incuriosity was at the heart of the war. I realized that we are actually suffering the results of Bush's and his cronies' incuriousness… their dimwitted foreign policy time and again shows that beneath it all these fuckers don't even care about trying to understand the world they wish to dominate.

After years of development, the final product is a musical that is truly unlike any other I’ve seen - different in form, style, message, and music than anything you would expect to see on Broadway. Stew, creator and composer, narrates the show from centerstage, with his band onstage amidst the action and occasionally even piping into the scenes. Stew shows us himself at a younger age (“Youth,” Daniel Breaker), with a fiercely talented supporting cast that takes on the variety of friends, family, lovers, and comrades whom Youth knows, loves, and inevitably leaves, “right when it was starting to feel real.”

Back when Passing Strange was at the Public, I said that "between the poetry, depth, and humor of the piece, and the kick-ass cast, Passing Strange is pretty transcendent." It's even stronger in it's more robust Broadway staging, and still completely unmissable. Check out the show's awesome website here, where you can download songs for free!! See? It really is the hippest show on Broadway...

Critics love Passing Strange

Hate to say I told you so, but it looks like I'm not the only one who digs Passing Strange.

David Rooney/Variety:

...a magical mystery tour that fuses aspects of concert, concept album, cabaret and revivalist meeting. Significantly finessed since last year's Public Theater run, this idiosyncratic odyssey toward self-knowledge explores universal questions of identity with the specificity and wry insight of autobiographical experience. It's boldly atypical Broadway fare that pulses with a new kind of vitality.

Terry Teachout/Wall Street Journal:

It's also the freshest musical in town, in part because Stew (whose real-life name is Mark Stewart) and his songwriting collaborator, Heidi Rodewald, are either ignorant of the conventions of musical comedy or don't care about them. Most likely they're more knowing than they let on, but it doesn't matter: "Passing Strange" is the most original Broadway musical since "The Light in the Piazza," and my guess is that it is headed for a long, profitable and influential run.

Charles Isherwood/New York Times:

Although it is far richer in wit, feeling and sheer personality than most of what is classified as musical theater in the neighborhood around Times Square these days, its big heart throbs to the sound of electric guitars, searing synthesizer chords, driving drums and lyrics delivered not in a clean croon but a throaty yelp.

Here's my review from Passing Strange's run at the Public. Miraculously, tickets are still available on TDF for many upcoming performances. I'll be there on Sunday, and these great reviews make me more excited than ever to see what they've done with the show.

[The great illustration above is from The New Yorker]

So excited for Passing Strange

Passing Strange, which I saw twice at the Public, is in rehearsals for their Broadway run at the Belasco. Like Spring Awakening did last season, this "musical" has the potential to take what was cool and intriguing Off-Broadway and pump it up to explosiveness in a big Broadway house. I am so pumped about this show, and my excitement grows exponentially with everything that creator/star Stew has to say about it:

"When I read about Shakespeare with people standing up and yelling at the stage, that reminds me more of a rock club than what I see in some of these stiff air-conditioned theatres. And maybe we are in some way connecting back to an energy that theatre must have had. Theatre must have been way more rock-n-roll at some point.

"Maybe we're not bringing in a rock energy — maybe we're bringing back theatre energy. We're trying to bring that spontaneity we thrive off in the rock-n-roll world and hope that people get that and say, 'Oh yeah, that was like this tonight, and it's not gonna be like this tomorrow.' I hope they can feel that."

You can listen to songs from the show on their myspace page.

"Celibacy is the only sane response to a world gone wild. My porno films feature fully clothed men making business deals."

I haven't had the mental capacity to post on anything too brainy recently. Work is busy and annoying, which unfortunately leaves me in a mood to post more about Travolta's embarassing antics than about the state of American Theater. However, I have to take a break from the fluffernutter to talk about my new favorite show, Passing Strange.


Comparisons between Passing Strange and Spring Awakening are kind of inevitable - they both are about youth, growing up, and challenging authority, they both have hot lighting by Kevin Adams, and they both not only have rock scores, but succeed in actually rocking.

However, where Spring Awakening is tight and purposeful, Passing Strange is loose, messy, and interpretive - and all the more engaging for it. The story follows an African-American teenager as he gets the hell out of Dodge (Dodge being beige-colored suburban LA), finds passion in music, and experiments with art, revolution, sex, music, and love. His search for love, understanding, and "the real" is set against the backdrop of Amsterdam and Berlin in the 1970's, when words like freedom and love and revolution were said with passion and without irony.

Daniel Breaker plays Youth, with a small ensemble representing everyone from his mother's conservative church friends, to the free thinkers of Amsterdam's hash bars, to the bizarre anarchists of Berlin's artistic underworld. The entire ensemble is really, really remarkable. They use different accents, movement, choreography, all kinds of stuff that could smack of grad-school interpretive acting class, and make it communicate in an completely authentic, never schticky way. Props also go to movement coordinator Karole Armitage who doubtless played an important role in keeping the movement organic and central to the storytelling.

The conducter of the train is Stew, the co-creator, narrator, and band front man who has the perspective needed to tell this story of his own youth with gravity, wisdom, charm, and humor. He also is a powerful performer who rallies the audience, transforming us from a room full of strangers into a community in a way that I've honestly never experienced in a theater.


As is sometimes the case with shows like this that evolve out of a non-theater idea, and take non-traditional routes with storytelling, the show is a bit patchy. The momentum chugs along, but is occasionally derailed by an extraneous plot turn or narration when there should be action. But between the poetry, depth, and humor of the piece, and the kick-ass cast, Passing Strange is pretty transcendent. Don't miss it.