The filmed version of the play, “Passing Strange”, is clever, funny, with great music. Spike Lee documented the last 3 days of the musical’s Broadway run (it won the 2008 Tony for Best Book) and it has now come to a theater near you.
I saw the play last year and loved it. The terrific band, whose members, along with the few actors, tell the story of a black young man, “Stew”, trying to look for the “real” by moving from middle class L.A, where he feels he doesn’t fit in and everything is a fraud, to Amsterdam and Germany.
In Europe, he is more “American”, than he was in California. To gain friends and acceptance in the avant garde scene, his new girl friend is only impressed with the oppressed, he “passes” as the stereotype of a ghetto youth and writes songs about the “struggle”. After doing this for a few years, he wonders what if the only thing real is your “art” and “reality” is phoney?
He eventually returns to America to pursue his art and just be himself. He is amazed that the direction of his life was decided by the decisions he made as a teenager.
Serious questions, but told with humor and music. Hard to describe, a different type of musical, but, very entertaining.
Book and lyrics by Stew
Music by Stew and Heidi Roderwald
Directed by Spike Lee