Passing Strange Review

By Frank Furnari, New Rep Reviewer

Passing Strange takes us on the journey of a young African-American youth in the 70s as he tries to discover his path in life. The narrator, an older, wiser version of the Youth introduces scenes and adds commentary as well as servers as part of the band. We meet the Youth in South Central LA in 1976 where is mother tries to get him to go to church. He ends up joining the church choir led by the reverend’s flamboyant son. While in the choir he gets to experiment with drugs and gets the idea to go to Europe. The Youth makes the decision to leave home and head first to Amsterdam then to Berlin where he indulges in sex, drugs, and his music. While in Europe his mother longs for his return, but he keeps putting it off, in part because he doesn't want to go back to his home town. At one point near the end of the play, the Youth asks "Why be with people who don't understand you?" the response he gets from one of his fellow artists is "Because they love me." In the end he learns that even when you find your art, you still need your family.

The performance opening night got off to a rocky start with some sound issues and the narrator (Cliff Odie) wasn’t able to grab me in. Odie's acting was solid, but his singing was not up to task. Fortunately, after a little bit of time with the amazingly talented ensemble’s entrance it all changed and I was hooked. Each of the ensemble members had a great voice and were adept at portraying a range of characters. Cheo Bourne masterfully portray's the Youth's journey to find himself and his art. Cheryl D. Singleton portrays Mother with both lovingness and humor – from her occasional lapses into her 'African-American dialect' to her touching phone calls to her son far away. De'Lon Grant, Eve Kagan, Maurice E. Parent, and Kami Rushell Smith all shine in the performances, it is a joy to watch them.

I had tried to watch Passing Strange on PBS when the aired a taping of the Broadway production starring the show's creator Stew. I didn't really care for it and sadly didn't make it through to the end. I'm glad that I got to see New Rep's production of this show as it convinced me that this is a good show once it gets going and a really enjoyable night of theatre.

"Passing Strange": Growing up in Pursuit of "The Real"

By Jana Pollack, New Rep Reviewer

New Rep's final production of the 2010-2011 season is "Passing Strange," a rock musical that tells the story of a young artist's life. It is a very cool piece of theater - a shape-shifting journey from LA to Amsterdam to Berlin and back again that employs a variety of storytelling methods and explores what it means to grow up in the pursuit of "the real."

Backed by a rock band, the Narrator (Cliff Odle) starts the show, and we soon meet the central character, simply called "Youth." Cheo Bourne infuses this role with just the right mix of naivete and unbridled youthful passion, and he's a joy to watch. As his mother, Cheryl D. Singleton also hits all of the right notes, and their opening scenes are quite funny. The story moves from the Youth's bedroom in their LA home into the church, where the Youth discovers music. It follows him as he starts a band with his choir friends, but is the only one who wants to stick with it, and as he then leaves home to find what's real: to devote himself to art and see what the world has in store for him.

Bourne and Singleton are joined by a supporting cast of characters who play many roles - first members of the LA church, then members of the artist colonies in Amsterdam and Berlin. Kami Rushell Smith stands out here, bringing passion and presence to all of her pieces. Unfortunately, Eve Kagan consistently overdoes it, which distracts from the rest of the group.

As the Narrator, Odle brings maturity and wisdom to his songs. His voice is not quite up to the task, however, and on songs that he shares with the other members of the musically gifted cast, he sometimes takes away more than he contributes.

Despite these missteps, this is a great show. It is very different, and better for it. Towards the end of the journey, the narrator says: "What do you do when you find yourself living a life that was planned by a teenager?". This elicited a chuckle from the audience, but it gets at one of the central questions of the piece: as we enter adulthood, is there a way to maintain a youthful, artistic sense of possibilities, while still living up to the responsibilities that come with growing up? I certainly hope so; the success of "Passing Strange" may be evidence that we can.

"Passing Stange": with Flying Colors?

by Jack Craib, New Rep Reviewer

In the last show of its current regular season, New Rep’s version of the musical “Passing Strange”, there is on stage as much talent as has ever graced any off-Tremont stage in recent Boston theater history. New Rep’s production of Stew’s 2008 semi-autobiographical Broadway creation makes a case for being arguably the best possible presentation of the work. The original production in New York lasted just over four months, perhaps primarily due to its sole Tony Award for the best book of the season (not all that impressive, given its only serious competition was the excellent “In the Heights“; the others were the amiably air headed “Xanadu” and the flop “Cry Baby”).

Whereas most often musicals find their biggest challenge in forming a coherent and engaging book, this happens to be this musical’s strong point. Stew’s book and lyrics, for which he alone gets credit, are often witty and sometimes wise, as in the memorable line “my porno films feature fully dressed men making business deals”, or “no one on this stage knows what it‘s like to hustle on the mean streets of South Central (L.A.)”. Some of it is predictable and too often polemic; still, there is more than enough there for coherence and engagement. It must be said that Stew at least tackled some heavyweight issues. Can meaning be found in art? Is life “a mistake that only art can correct”? Do we really spend our “whole adult lives acting on the decisions of a teenager”?

Yet this is a musical, and there’s the rub. The musical score, credited to Stew and Heidi Rodewald, is by and large repetitive, undistinguished and instantly forgettable. Stew himself has his main character, the Narrator (played by Cliff Odle, the only performer who didn’t seem comfortable with his or her part) admit at one point that this would be a good place to include a show tune about a youth (identified only as, uh, Youth, played by the extraordinary Cheo Bourne) planning to travel to Europe; the only hitch is that he admits he can’t write that kind of show tune. This seems obvious by this point in the work, which isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker. Other productions (notably “Spring Awakening” and “In the Heights”) broke new musical ground with their alternative rock and salsa.

Here Stew and Rodewald dish up lukewarm rock, punk, funk and gospel, and, with a few brief exceptions (“Mom Song”, and snippets of “Amsterdam” and “Keys”) they disappoint. Later in the production, Stew has the gall to ridicule the showtuniness of “On the Street Where You Live” (that somewhat memorable little ditty from a musical you may have heard of, “My Fair Lady”). Even Sondheim has been known to indulge in self-deprecating humor about his atypical scores (as in “Merrily We Roll Along” when a character sings that he likes a song you can hum, then references “Some Enchanted Evening”), but he has the musical chops to get away with it. If you’re going to dis an entire musical genre, you’d better be prepared to back up your own claim to fame. On the basis of this score, Stew fails to do so.

Who don’t fail, and in fact do pass with flying colors, are the creative talent on and behind the stage. One standout, Cheryl D. Singleton (as Mother) has an all too brief scene near the end and provides the single moment of heart of the entire evening. All of the performances by the rest of the cast, including De’Lon Grant, Eve Kagan, Maurice Parent, and Kami Rushell Smith, as well as the direction by Kate Warner and choreography by Kelli Edwards, contribute seamlessly to a production that caps off a memorable season of works of transformation.

The only misstep is a musical finale, after a rather abrupt and flat ending, in which the entire cast gets involved in one of the oldest and most overdone theatrical clichés, the forced audience participation game. As they belt out the hypothetical question “Is It All Right?” and their own answer, “Yeah, it’s all right”, one is tempted to paraphrase Stew from elsewhere in the book: “Yes and No. That is, Yo”.

"Passing Strange" Not to be Missed

What a trip! The final offering of New Rep’s season is not to be missed. Passing Strange is a tale of a young black man’s pilgrimage of self-discovery, told almost entirely in music. The narrator (Cliff Odele), an older and wiser version of the young hero, introduces and comments minimally on stages in the journey, but the real story is in the music, witty, rocking, poignant and moving – in more ways than one – by the end the audience is dancing in the aisles. Cheo Bourne is affectingly naïve and confused as a young black man growing up in a middleclass home in Los Angeles. He rebels against his mother’s church going (or rather her insistence on his church going) only to discover his first artistic family in the church choir where he is mentored by the choir director. Trapped by his own dependence on his minister father, the closeted gay choir director teaches our hero to smoke weed and implants in him a driving ambition to explore life, his true identity and artistic ambition in Europe.

He will one day have to deal with the mother (Cheryl D. Singleton) who created him, but for now the hero is off to seek a more authentic life and, though he would never admit it, find the substitute family where he can be the self he would like to be. He concedes Paris to his predecessor ex-pats James Baldwin and Josephine Baker, but announces his ambition to conquer the new capital of bohemianism, Amsterdam. With his mind blown by the experience of seeing hashish on a café menu, he is easily seduced by a young woman who offers him her keys in one of the play’s most haunting songs. He finds family in a squalid squat which to its blessed out inhabitants feels like paradise. The singers who populated the LA choir become his Amsterdam housemates, and with them he explores what it means to be an artist whose first creation must be himself. The young man is delighted and bemused by his companions’ combination of sexual and intellectual freedom, exemplified for him by his lover explaining the ramifications of Dutch colonialism with her shirt off.

But paradise cloys, and we’re off again, this time to Berlin where our pilgrim encounters yet another family, this time a radical anti-capitalist heavy metal collective. This family is more demanding, if somewhat silly in their intellectual pretentiousness. When they threaten to evict them, he wins their allegiance with a fake ghetto act – the middleclass black man still can’t be himself, still has to fit into someone else’s stereotypes.

There’s not a single weak spot in this multi-talented cast. The four actors who form the hero’s “family” in each new place, function as a chorus and are particularly striking in their chameleon ability to change vocal and movement styles to fit LA, Amsterdam and Berlin. Each member has moments in the spotlight, though Maurice Parent almost steals the show at a couple of striking moments.

The minimal set mimics a rock concert set-up and we are always conscious of the superb work of the four musicians who provide guitar, drums and keyboard back-up.

Passing Strange is a fitting conclusion to the season (although there is an added summer production to come). The staging and choreography are ingenious and well-executed and the musicians and dancers are definitely up to the task. It’s great fun. Don’t miss it.

~ Johanna Ettin