Passing Strange

Moments into Passing Strange you realize this will be a different theatrical experience. Shortly thereafter you think, "This is going to be great." Then Stew and company arrive in Amsterdam and, well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I was trembling and struggling to catch my breath I was so awed. As the wall of sound from "Keys" washed over me, as the emotional intensity of Youth in Amsterdam punched me in the gut, I was transported.

After that defining moment in my three decades of theatergoing, I was hooked. And things only got better and better. I'd call this a top-5 experience in my life.

Nominally, Passing Strange is the story of Stew, in the show he's the narrator and tour guide, as he travels from L.A. to Amsterdam and Berlin to find himself, his identity--to find what is real. His Black, middle-class existence is a mask he needs to yank from his face. Youth (Daniel Breaker) is the young man looking to find something real.

The journey is less about the physical move from the U.S. to Europe--though this journey is critical to Youth's self-discovery--than it is about the more personal journey that Youth must go through to find his place in the world.

Add to that ongoing ruminations on reality as a social construct, identity, and art, set them to driving rock rhythms, and personify these ideas in the bodies of an extraordinary cast, and you have something so stirring and original my love for the power of theater was ignited again and raised to new heights. Suddenly the brilliant Gypsy felt like a history lesson.

Annie Dorsen's staging is also worth mention. The tiniest moments of interaction between Stew and Youth have tremendous power. The cast is used to brilliant effect on a stage that seems bare and cluttered as needed, sometimes simultaneously.

I was also thrilled to see such a diverse audience. The racial and age diversity gave me great hope for music theater. The 70-year-old women to my right were the first on their feet at the curtain call and engaged in an intellectual comparison of Passing Strange and Spring Awakening. The young men to behind me were high school students.

It's worth taking a look at the website, and the two songs on the site are great, But don't be fooled for one second that you're getting more than the tiniest fraction of the strange beauty that is Passing Strange.