Creator & Star of Passing Strange - Stew / WireImage
Who says Broadway isn't ready for something new and exciting? Not the producers of Passing Strange. Last week everyone was saying that Passing Strange wouldn't work on Broadway and no one would go see it. Today they are celebrating over at the Belasco Theater after receiving a pot full of fantastic reviews last night. Passing Strange opened last night after transferring to the Broadway following its well received run downtown at The Public Theater.
The show is part rock concert, part musical, part performance art, part indescribable. The show is created by a man named Stew, who is on stage for the entire show narrating and overseeing things as he plays in the band and sings; he was assisted in this creation by his musical partner Heidi Rodewald and director Annie Dorsen. The cast features de'Adre Aziza, Daniel Breaker (who is Buh-rilliant and should snag a Tony nom), Eisa Davis, Colman Domingo, Chad Goodridge, Rebecca Naomi Jones. It should also be noted that the risk taking producers of this show are The Shubert Organization and Elizabeth Ireland McCann. I saw the show at The Public and adored it. I hope that these great reviews will help it find a huge audience and run for a very long time. The Broadway definitely needs new blood like this show that will help change the definition of what a "Broadway musical" is or can be. Bravo Passing Strange!
Here is a glimpse at what some of the critics had to say...
New York Times - Charles Isherwood - Click HERE to read the whole review
Isherwood RAVES about the show. Heaping praise on Stew, the cast, the show's originality and then compares it very favorable to the recently raved about new production of Sunday in the Park with George...
"But please don't call it a Broadway musical. You could scare away too many people who might actually enjoy it. Call it a rock concert with a story to tell, trimmed with a lot of great jokes. Or call it a sprawling work of performance art, complete with angry rants and scary drag queens. Call it whatever you want, really. I'll just call it wonderful, and a welcome anomaly on Broadway, which can use all the vigorous new artistic blood it can get."
"The Seurat of "Sunday" would surely understand Stew's reflections on the trouble this makes for the creatively obsessed. "People like me - we feel like art is more real than life," he says toward the end of the show. The Sondheim Seurat would sympathize too with Stew's response to an unfathomable loss. He just picks up his guitar and gets ready to rock onward, trying to "fill the void with song."
Variety - David Rooney - Click HERE to read the whole review
Rooney compares Passing Strange to other great rock musicals and delivers another knock-out review for the new musical. Rooney says the show is much improved since its downtown production and gives the producers major props for bringing this unusual show uptown to the Broadway...
"From "Hair" to "Rent" to "Spring Awakening," composers have sought to reinvigorate musical theater by harnessing the energy and raw expressiveness of rock. But "Passing Strange," the defiantly unclassifiable musical by Los Angeles singer-songwriter Stew, is something else altogether -- a magical mystery tour that fuses aspects of concert, concept album, cabaret and revivalist meeting. Significantly finessed since last year's Public Theater run, this idiosyncratic odyssey toward self-knowledge explores universal questions of identity with the specificity and wry insight of autobiographical experience. It's boldly atypical Broadway fare that pulses with a new kind of vitality."
Rock on! If that doesn't tempt you to buy a tix, I don't know what would?
Congrats to everyone at the Belsaco! Have a GREAT run Passing Strange!
~ See You On The Aisle
Reader Comments
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Yeah! I'm back and able to post!
Bixby, if it weren't for Gabrielle, I wouldn't have had the luck of finding your wonderful blog!
love to read your take on Broadway!
EW's newest issue has a GREAT article about Rent from the beginning to the closing, with interviews with the original cast. In it, they talk about the shows with "Rent" appeal, Passing Strange being one of them!! Same with Spring Awakening and one other that I just forgot. Anyway, it is a great article to check out.
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