“Passing Strange” at the Berkeley Rep

I’ve been a fan of Stew‘s music since my friend and colleague Barry Smolin turned me on to The Negro Problem a decade ago. The man is a true genius of pop music, funny and smart and full of sharp observations of humanity.

All of Stew’s and The Negro Problem’s CDs are worth seeking out, but my favorite is Stew’s The Naked Dutch Painter followed by TNP’s Welcome Black. (Follow those links to hear audio samples.)

Last night I saw Passing Strange at the Berkeley Repertory Theater. It’s a musical play, with Stew and a band onstage with the actor/singers. It’s based on Stew’s life, growing up in LA and living in Amsterdam and Berlin before returning to southern California. The songs are awesome, of course.

Here’s an interview with Stew that appears in the program and also on the Berkeley Rep’s web site: a song big enough to run around in – well worth a read!

Robert Hurwitt’s review in the San Francisco Chronicle is pretty positive, but I think he missed a few things. “What he hasn’t done [] well, though, is fill out his central figure. Youth seems to become more passive in his travels, soaking up experiences without showing us much of his internal journey.” I disagree: you see and hear the character absorbing everything that happens to him, and by the time he gets back to LA he’s learned some very important things about love, life, and music.

My favorite songs in the show are “Amsterdam” and “We Just Had Sex.” Parts of “The Drug Suite” (from The Naked Dutch Painter) are used in the show, and so is “Come Down Now” from TNP’s Joys and Concerns.

I’ve been a Berkeley Rep subscriber for more than thirty years (with a break of several years in there). The company has presented some terrific works, including several world premieres. Passing Strange is a co-production of BRT and New York’s Public Theater, where it opens following the end of the Berkeley run. It’s here through December 3, and I recommend it very, very highly.

UPDATE: Just got some review excerpts from the BRT publicist:

“sometimes an artist’s reviews are so hyperbolically positive because there’s some fire under all that smoke. Take Stew, for example, who has created a piece of musical theater titled Passing Strange that paints an alternately uproarious and heartbreaking picture of the black experience from suburbia to bohemia… if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get your butt to Berkeley, plant it in a seat, and be wowed by one of this generation’s greatest talents.”—SF Bay Guardian

“Stew rocks, yo! Musically, the singer/songwriter serves up one hot dish with Passing Strange…It’s the archetypal hipster-coming-of-age tale…the score is smokin’. Full of funkadelic feel-good anthems, it slides from punk to rock to blues like a good party mix…There is no end to the smart-aleck wit in this play”—San Jose Mercury News

“It took nearly 40 years, but we finally have the first coming-of-age-in-the-’60s play that truly gets it right, with all the sex, drugs, radical politics and angst intact … Passing Strange expands the possibility of what musical theater can be…Stew leads a five-piece band, circling the stage through a score that defies you to remain motionless in your seat… a sparkling, engaging and highly entertaining show.” – Contra Costa Times

“an engaging coming-of-age story, told with the energy of an art-rock concert…clever, tuneful songs keep its pulse racing, in comic and unexpectedly affecting passages…It’s a portrait of the artist as a young bohemian whose spiritual awakening [is] a musical epiphany…As a song cycle, it’s technically impressive…As a play, it’s an entertaining travelogue…With the band cooking—on every form from gospel and blues to punk, cabaret, soul, minstrel, calypso and performance art—Stew sings in a powerful, flexible voice as comfortably capacious on a tender ballad as it is energizing in a down and dirty blues growl.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Make no mistake, this is a terrific show…a musical in the guise of a concert…pulsates with the sounds of pop, rock, funk, punk, gospel, folk and New Wave…Stew and Rodewald create music that feels authentic—a rarity in this world of shiny, corporate musical theater.”—Oakland Tribune

“A pleasingly wayward young man’s odyssey… Strange is a lot like a live concept album… a vital, imaginative production [that’s] full of hilarious set-pieces, catchy songs, witty lyrics and dialogue… choreographer Karole Armitage contributes pop-culture riffs to a show that rarely sits still.” – Variety

“Stop reading right now and buy tickets to Passing Strange before it heads to New York…If more new musicals looked like this, we might yet see a revitalization of Broadway.”—SFist

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