I’ve set out to write this thing about half a dozen times now, and I keep stalling. This afternoon, I was listening to a mixed CD of tunes by Passing Strange co-creator/narrator Stew and his band, The Negro Problem, and things started (kinda hesitantly) to come together.
Stew’s music, both in its gentler “Afro-baroque” guise (as Stew) and its more rock-oriented guise (as The Negro Problem) has always consisted of intimate, closely-observed vignettes. They’re character sketches of people who, no matter how screwy they may seem, are immediately familiar. We all know, or have known, these people.
Therein lies what works best about Passing Strange. Sure, the character of Youth is an Everyman character, and many of the play’s other characters are composites of some kind or another. The thing is that a lot of writers, both in song and on stage, confuse “everyman” with “lowest common denominator.” They remove all the identifying characteristics, and whitewash all the uniqueness, out of their characters, so that what you’re left with is less a flesh-and-blood human being and more like a horoscope: a blank slate onto which you can project your own dreams, insecurities, paranoia, nostalgia, whatever. These are some very specific people, and not just a series of “types” who’ve stumbled onstage.
The music doesn’t hurt, either. On the whole, Passing Strange feels like you’ve wandered into a rock concert and a Broadway show broke out. A lot of ink has been spilled (and more, no doubt, will be) about how this play so gleefully breaks down boundaries; I tend to disagree. From very early on (TNP’s 1997 offering, Post Minstrel Syndrome) it’s clear that Stew doesn’t so much demolish the boundaries as ignore them. He realizes, I think, that—like the concept of “The Real” that provides Strange’s backdrop—these boundaries (rock “versus” R&B, James Brown “versus” Arthur Lee, Kurt Weill “versus” Einsturzende Neubaten) are just constructs. Music’s just… well, music. There’s nothing inherently incompatible in any of it. So punk segues to soul, “My Little Red Book” and “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” have equal earworm time with shades of Sondheim and industrial. The musical draws a handful of its tunes from past efforts, their lyrics changed slightly to better fit the action onstage. Two songs are lifted from The Negro Problem’s albums including the show’s opener, “We Might Play All Night,” (reworked from “Out Now”) and “Come Down Now,” which in its current incarnation deserves to be a hit single. Stew’s solo efforts also yield some material; “Arlington Hill” and “Must’ve Been High” come from “The Naked Dutch Painter,” while “Love Like That” first showed up on “Something Deeper Than These Changes.” But, unlike the rash of “Jukebox Musicals” that mix an artist’s back catalog with a handful of dancers and a thin plot (Mama Mia!, Xanadu, Movin’ Out, and The Times They Are A-Changin’ all come to mind), this looks, feels, and plays different.See, if this isn’t your typical Broadway musical, it also shouldn’t somehow be relegated to “black theater.” Sure, it’s written and acted by people who happen to be (to cop a phrase from Curtis Mayfield) darker than blue… but it’s as thematically universal as it is stylistically varied. And, unlike Rent, to use just one example, it’s not trying to be anything other than what it is. It doesn’t worry about whether it’s Broadway enough, rock enough, black enough, or whether it’s going to make the white folks in the orchestra seats uneasy. For two-and-a-half hours, it’s nothing other than its own bad self. (more…)