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Gay City News | 2007.may.24
Seeking Oneself
by Christopher Byrne
It's always exciting when traditional forms of theater are made fresh, exciting, and, yes, new; it renews my belief in the power of narrative and live performance to create a compelling and relevant experience. Such is the case with Passing Strange, the new musical now at the Public.
Borrowing from the traditions of the book musical, ballad singing, poetry slam, and Brechtian storytelling, singer/songwriter Stew and his collaborator Heidi Rodewald have created a fresh and consistently engaging story of an artist as a young man. That artist, presumably, is Stew himself, and the musical chronicles his life from a young boy who became enamored of singing through the church choir to the edge of his maturity as an artist. It is funny, laced with both satire and a wonderful sense of affection for facing up to the missteps of one's past.
In narrating the story, Stew becomes a kind of manic Burl Ives, always likeable, but with a dark and sardonic undercurrent. Poetry and music flow from him in a seemingly effortless and inexhaustible stream. He is a galvanizing and charismatic performer, always in the background as the story he spins is acted out in front of him.
The abstraction of the staging, the fluidity of the movement and the easy access Stew has to all kinds of cultural references from soul to Broadway to German deconstructionism create a diverse piece - musically and verbally - that hangs together. We are asked to journey into the mind and the soul of this man and to understand the myriad influences that have shaped his artistry - and by extension to explore how the artists' voice is shaped.
And artistry is what this is all about, almost to a fault. If there is any minor cavil with the show it's that while the art, intelligence, and perspective are always dead on, the heart gets shorter shrift than it might.
Still, like Spring Awakening, the journey of a young man to find himself - particularly out of a place of relative comfort and advantage about which Stew makes no bones - resonates and reminds us of our own journeys of self-discovery.
The music is sharp and well crafted, encompassing a range of styles over the evening, but ultimately emerging as a comparatively pure rock sound characterized by delightfully idiosyncratic tempi and harmonics. Moreover the music is integrated seamlessly into the plot so it always feels organic to the story. The company gets high praise for managing to deliver the energy and power of the music without blowing out the walls of the Anspacher Theater.
The ensemble cast does a beautiful job with it as they do with the variety of different characters they play. Only Daniel Breaker as Youth, Eisa Davis as Mother, and Stew as Narrator play sole parts. I was particularly taken with the scenes in Berlin, which were rife with statements such as "Narrative is a capitalist plot," and the idea that it's possible to take a vacation from the revolution to go home for Christmas.
Wry as those moments are, they are also very telling about the realities of the artist in the real world where rent must be paid and the future planned for. All of this is essential to the shaping of the modern artist. And, if narrative is indeed a capitalist plot, then Stew and Rodewald have earned the fruits of their labors... and then some.
