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Stew in |
KQED Arts & Culture | 2006.november.2
Theater Review: Passing Strange
"Stew" is a great moniker for the rock musician-poet-filmmaker, all-around-performing-artist, whose Passing Strange made its bow last week at Berkeley Rep. He's a rich mix of flavors, a bubbling cauldron of ideas and talents, and his latest effort, which takes an autobiographical look at his development as a young black musician, is a kind of spicy recipe based on his life. Some of the ingredients might seem improbable, but the final dish is worth savoring.
Passing Strange takes its title from Othello's description of how he won Desdemona's heart. But as with much of the wordsmithy in this play — which Stew and partner Heidi Rodewald first developed at the Sundance Institute and which will move on to New York's Public Theater after the Berkeley run — "passing" is meant to encompass numerous other meanings: passing for white or passing for black, being passed up, passing through, passing on. The word itself has a sense of restlessness that is reflected in the rhythm of the play as well as the music, as it follows Stew's youthful escapades — a Baptist upbringing in LA and coming of age amidst rarefied surroundings in Amsterdam and Berlin...
From the early previews and reviews on Passing Strange it looks as though everyone is still trying to figure out a category for it — rock musical? Performance art? Afro-Baroque cabaret? I have no idea what it is, but whatever it is, it's terrific entertainment.
Napa Valley Register | 2006.november.1
Music, passion and wild fun, make Passing Strange a journey from L.A. to "the real"
One man’s quest for “the real” in the realm where rock music meets theater becomes a greatly entertaining journey for an audience in Passing Strange, which had its world premiere at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre last week.
The title comes from Shakespeare’s Othello, from the scene in which the ill-fated Moor describes how he won Desdemona: “When I did speak of some distressful stroke, That my youth suffer’d, My story being done, She gave me for my pains a world of sighs: She swore, in faith, ‘twas strange, ‘twas passing strange.”
The author of this work, however, is Stew, a gifted singer-songwriter who performs with his band, the Negro Problem...
The absorbing characters, the rich musical dialogue, and the underlying humor that never lets the piece take itself too seriously all combine for an evening that’s strange — passing strange but marvelous.
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Stew and |
San Francisco Chronicle | 2006.october.27
Engaging coming-of-age musical
a long, 'strange' trip for L.A. youth,
from Baptist Church to Berlin
"This is just a big song with a bunch of people running around inside of it," one of those people objects from inside the new musical Passing Strange. The description isn't quite accurate. The artistic coming-of-age tale by the singer-songwriter known as Stew contains many songs, in an eclectic and tuneful variety of styles, not to mention all the underscored passages that are almost as reliably witty as Stew's literate lyrics.
As a song cycle, it's technically impressive and generally dynamic. As a play, it's an entertaining travelogue, as the opening song promises, of the "Baptist Church, LSD and French new wave," peopled with sharply drawn and performed characters... It's an engaging coming-of-age story, told with the energy of an art-rock concert in director Annie Dorsen and choreographer Karole Armitage's vibrant stagings. Stew and Rodewald's clever, tuneful songs keep its pulse racing, in comic and unexpectedly affecting passages. The actors... create wonderfully detailed cameos of the many people in Youth's life's song.
