Passing Strange
Passing Strange, a multiple Tony Award nominee two years back, defies categorization. Book musical, rock show, performance art, comedy, navel gazing, spoken-word poetry - this autobiographical musing on art and growing up manages to be all those things Even if you hate one or more of those categories, there’s a lot of enjoy in the New Rep’s production. Even when the show missteps, the emotion generated by the engaging cast makes it all feel real - an important concept in this show.
The original Broadway version was the brain child of musician and composer Stew, who played the role of the Narrator, commenting on his younger self’s journey from frustrated teen in middle class African American Los Angeles to aspiring musician sampling the pleasures of Amsterdam and the rage-fueled counter culture of Berlin.
Taking on Stew’s role in the New Rep’s production, Cliff Odle is less magnetic front man for the on-stage band than a gentle guiding presence. If he doesn’t always successfully negotiate Stew’s rangy melodies, he does deliver the composer’s poetic lyrics with sincerity, and he’s particularly fine at delivering the wry comedic moments that nicely punctuate the earnestness of his younger self’s search for his identity, his true musical voice, which he refers to as "the real".
Yeah, "Passing Strange" gets a little heavy-handed with the search for meaning, but is at least self-aware enough to mock the concept of Art with a capital "A" (embodied in a gem of a number that’s an ode to the illicit progeny of one’s ego and one’s pain) at the same time it slips in real poetic gems like "Franklin’s words washed over him like a Bach fugue coming out of a cheap car stereo." Just as the second act threatens to meander or reprise melodies to the point of tedium, the young man’s search turns into an older man looking back with regret in a way that’s truly emotional and a nice showcase for the mother-son relationship that Cheryl D. Singleton as Mother and Cheo Bourne as the Youth manage to forge despite fairly limited on-stage time together.
When "Passing Strange" focuses on its theme of identity, particularly of how its characters are all passing as someone else, it clicks into higher gear. When the Youth reluctantly joins the church choir and ends up smoking weed with the conductor, it’s a beautiful morass of regret, with both characters realizing they’re outcasts simply passing as productive suburban blacks. The Youth later passes as a grown-in-the-ghetto black to get in good with a Berlin artist’s collective, which prompts a tonally-out-of-nowhere but toe tapping tune "The Black One" that smartly comments on Germany’s endless fascination of coolness by association with black artists like Josephine Baker.
As the choirmaster, Maurice Parent is a standout in a talented ensemble (De’Lon Grant, Eve Kagen and Kami Rushell Smith play everything from weave-patting teens to Molotov cocktail throwing Berlin performance artists with gleeful abandon). Parent is by turns heart breaking as a man who has repressed his inner Maria Callas for the security of his father’s money, and then explodes as a Sprockets-on -SNL performance artist Mr. Venus, contorting his body and all but deep throating the mic.
Despite regularly breaking out of the book musical form and winking protestations that this cast and band doesn’t do your standard show tune fare, "Passing Strange" ends up where most musicals do - on the side of love, with the young man learning about "love without understanding". The plots points could have wound up seeming maudlin, but the New Rep’s cast and director Kate Warner’s light touch with the material keep the energy high, the emotions nicely underplayed and, well, real.
Passing Strange continues through May 22 at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown. For more information visit the theater’s website.
The original Broadway version was the brain child of musician and composer Stew, who played the role of the Narrator, commenting on his younger self’s journey from frustrated teen in middle class African American Los Angeles to aspiring musician sampling the pleasures of Amsterdam and the rage-fueled counter culture of Berlin.
Taking on Stew’s role in the New Rep’s production, Cliff Odle is less magnetic front man for the on-stage band than a gentle guiding presence. If he doesn’t always successfully negotiate Stew’s rangy melodies, he does deliver the composer’s poetic lyrics with sincerity, and he’s particularly fine at delivering the wry comedic moments that nicely punctuate the earnestness of his younger self’s search for his identity, his true musical voice, which he refers to as "the real".
Yeah, "Passing Strange" gets a little heavy-handed with the search for meaning, but is at least self-aware enough to mock the concept of Art with a capital "A" (embodied in a gem of a number that’s an ode to the illicit progeny of one’s ego and one’s pain) at the same time it slips in real poetic gems like "Franklin’s words washed over him like a Bach fugue coming out of a cheap car stereo." Just as the second act threatens to meander or reprise melodies to the point of tedium, the young man’s search turns into an older man looking back with regret in a way that’s truly emotional and a nice showcase for the mother-son relationship that Cheryl D. Singleton as Mother and Cheo Bourne as the Youth manage to forge despite fairly limited on-stage time together.
When "Passing Strange" focuses on its theme of identity, particularly of how its characters are all passing as someone else, it clicks into higher gear. When the Youth reluctantly joins the church choir and ends up smoking weed with the conductor, it’s a beautiful morass of regret, with both characters realizing they’re outcasts simply passing as productive suburban blacks. The Youth later passes as a grown-in-the-ghetto black to get in good with a Berlin artist’s collective, which prompts a tonally-out-of-nowhere but toe tapping tune "The Black One" that smartly comments on Germany’s endless fascination of coolness by association with black artists like Josephine Baker.
As the choirmaster, Maurice Parent is a standout in a talented ensemble (De’Lon Grant, Eve Kagen and Kami Rushell Smith play everything from weave-patting teens to Molotov cocktail throwing Berlin performance artists with gleeful abandon). Parent is by turns heart breaking as a man who has repressed his inner Maria Callas for the security of his father’s money, and then explodes as a Sprockets-on -SNL performance artist Mr. Venus, contorting his body and all but deep throating the mic.
Despite regularly breaking out of the book musical form and winking protestations that this cast and band doesn’t do your standard show tune fare, "Passing Strange" ends up where most musicals do - on the side of love, with the young man learning about "love without understanding". The plots points could have wound up seeming maudlin, but the New Rep’s cast and director Kate Warner’s light touch with the material keep the energy high, the emotions nicely underplayed and, well, real.
Passing Strange continues through May 22 at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown. For more information visit the theater’s website.