Passing Strange theatre review — a joyous, shape-shifting musical odyssey

At the moment in Passing Strange when our hero, as heroes are bound to do, sets out from home in search of horizons new, the narrator intercedes to address the audience. “At this point in the play we were planning an upbeat showtune,” he says. “But we don’t know how to write those kind of tunes.”

That’s not a confession you’ll generally hear in a Broadway musical. But then Passing Strange, written by American singer-songwriter Stew (with music by Stew and Heidi Rodewald) and shown on Broadway in 2008, is no regular musical. Rather it’s a joyous, gloriously indefinable, shape-shifting show, splicing gig, theatre, cabaret and wicked pastiche to tell the story of a young artist on a musical odyssey in search of his true self.

One of its most endearing tactics is to send itself up. There’s even a moment of doubt as to whether anything at all will happen, as the band and actors assemble onstage to wait, with increasing impatience, for the narrator, played in this European premiere by Giles Terera, to show up.

Show up he does, however, bringing with him the effortless flair that so often characterises Terera’s performances and guiding us through his alter-ego’s youthful follies with a mix of affection and exasperation, not to mention some zinging solos on electric guitar. He watches on and offers wry commentary as the young Black protagonist — played with wonderful, gawky naivety by Keenan Munn-Francis — throws off his middle-class Los Angeles upbringing and embraces all that the late 1970s and early 1980s have to offer in the way of artistic rebellion.

Coming-of-age is scarcely a novel storyline, but here it has a winning combination of mischief and sincerity, together with a sharp ear for musical styles. Tartly funny observation of the worst excesses of artistic navel-gazing travel hand-in-hand with a heartfelt, genuine search for what it means to be Black and an artist in late 20th-century America. 

Chivvied by his mother (Rachel Adedeji) to attend church (though, as he remarks pointedly, she doesn’t go herself), our young hero experiences an epiphany in the glory of gospel music and another when he spies the local teenage goddess, who informs him he’s not Black enough for her: “Put a little soul in your stroll.”

After a brief and noisy attempt to be a punk star (rehearsals uncoolly interrupted by Mom with sandwiches), he heads first to Amsterdam and a dope-hazy squatters’ paradise, where he, erm, expands his sexual horizons. Then it’s on to West Berlin and an aggressively anti-everything 1980s cabaret collective called Nauhaus, who announce their arrival onstage with an ear-splitting assault of drums, bass, keys and guitar, a riot in the lighting box and costumes (by Ben Stones) that include a garland of (clean) loo roll gradually spooling out from the toilet bowl. It will take a grievous personal loss for our young man to find for himself what art can really mean and that he doesn’t have to be anyone else’s idea of “real”.

It’s over-extended, sags in the middle and gets a little lost in its own entrails. But this is still a terrific show, laced with a mix of buzzing, funny and moving songs, staged with zinging wit by Liesl Tommy and performed by a superb, tireless cast (David Albury, Nadia Violet Johnson, Renée Lamb, Caleb Roberts) and band.

★★★★☆

To July 6, youngvic.org