Passing Strange is strangely wonderful

[ellen_datlow]

Tonight I went to see a terrific play with friends --it recently moved from the Public Theater to Broadway and it's an odd one. No one I'd ever heard of in it. Great cast. A musical written by a black musician named Stew (no last name)--autobiographical. He narrates the story about a young middle class black kid living in LA who decides he wants to write and play rock and roll. His mother is a single mother but they're financially comfortable. He leaves to go to "find himself" in the sixties--to Amsterdam and then to Berlin. There are four or five musicians who are onstage (but seated in holes in the stage throughout. The youth (He's never given a name) meets all these kids his age and hangs out with them--does does acid and hash and has lots of sex (it IS the sixties) but is dissatisfied and leaves for West Berlin. There he meets several avant garde artists/lefties against he bourgeosie (while they reveal that they are --of course--from the bourgeosie.
The structure is complicated. The narrator often talks to the audience. Or just watches the action while his young alter ego acts (out) on stage. We all three recommend it!
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Passing Strange

Comments

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

Velma and I got to see it back at the Public Theater in the front row, which was amazingly awesome. I think you'd almost certainly enjoy his albums, both as Stew and his band the Negro Problem. Start with the Stew album Guest Host, or one of the first two Negro Problem albums (Post-Minstrel Syndrome and Joys and Concerns).

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I bet that was awesome. Did he take your Playbill? (he took one from someone in the front row to use as a prop).

Thanks for the suggestion.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

(It's set more in the late 1970s / early 1980s, by the way.)

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

It is? From the Amsterdam stuff it sure seemed like my experience of the "sixties"--which were actually the early 70s. But of course that makes sense because of the punk references...

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

I think the sixties lasted longer in Amsterdam.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

I also like that not only does the narrator talk to the audience, the actors and even the musicians talk to the narrator. ("A woman can speak for herself!" "Yeah!")

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Yes. It had some wonderful touches like that.