Passing Strange

Passing Strange follows a young Black musician who leaves a comfortable, churchgoing home in search of what he calls the real, and keeps going until there is nowhere further to go. A narrator watches him do it, knowing exactly how it ends, and cannot stop him.

He picks up a guitar, falls out with his mother, and crosses an ocean looking for somewhere he can be an artist without having to explain himself. He finds communes, lovers, drugs and audiences who want him to perform a version of himself he has never actually lived. The further he travels from home, the more past he invents to justify the journey, and the question of what he left behind will not leave him alone.

Stew wrote the book and lyrics and performed as the narrator in the original production; Heidi Rodewald wrote the music with him. Developed from 2004 and first staged in 2006, it reached a commercial run in 2008 and won a major award for its book. The score is rock played by a band in full view, pulling in gospel, punk and blues as it goes.

It is a musical that behaves like a gig. The band is visible, the narrator talks straight to the audience, and scenes stop so he can comment on them. That looseness is deliberate, and the ending lands harder because of it. The show is very funny for most of its length, and then it is not.

Passing Strange is for anyone who left home in order to become someone, and for anyone who has since wondered what that cost. It is written in the language of rock rather than about it.