This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
As my fellow audience members and I filed out of Theatrical Outfit’s fiery, funny and cracklingly clever production of the 2008 musical “Passing Strange,” onstage through Oct. 22, I found myself wondering if perhaps there’s an answer to climate change after all. That is, if only we could harness and synthesize the combustible, fathomless skill and energy of this show’s cast and turn it into some kind of renewable fuel.
And yes, this is the only way to put into adequate words the sheer abundance of talent onstage — in a coup of casting by the theater’s associate artistic director Addae Moon — for the two-plus hours of the show’s runtime.
Spanning genres, continents and years, we follow Youth (Christian Magby), a young Black American musician who’s hungry for artistic meaning and truth. We begin in Los Angeles, where he’s pulled into the church choir less for the religious stuff and more for the pew-rattling songs.
Then, when Youth decides it’s time to become an expat, following in the footsteps of other 20th century Black artistic luminaries like Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, Nina Simone and Jimi Hendrix, we venture out to an idyllic but indulgent Amsterdam and then to a hilariously nihilistic yet Fosse-fied Cold War West Berlin.
While the show employs some self-effacing nods to the pretentiousness and absurdity of art as a profession, it also clearly has a deep love and empathy for it. This piece was obviously created by someone who creates and wants to make sense of what the creating is all about.
Credit: Casey G. Ford
Credit: Casey G. Ford
It tracks that Stew, the show’s composer, lyricist and writer, was a musician himself in the 1990s and followed an almost identical geographical route to his protagonist. That autobiographical aspect gives this authenticity and uniqueness, which is especially interesting given that it’s also a meta-narrative show about the quest to find such authenticity.
It helps that Stew is a fantastic writer, giving us poetic lines to describe each action and choice, such as how the congregation of Youth’s church is “waiting to be released from its collective frown.”
“Passing Strange” disassembles and reconstructs the particulars of a coming-of-age story we all recognize, never giving us anything close to boilerplate. Even when a scene seems to be headed down a predictable route, that pathway quickly gets inverted, folded back on itself.
For instance, as Youth is planning to jet away to Europe to find himself, the narrator, played by the always-terrific Brad Raymond, quips: “At this point in the play, we were planning a show tune. An upbeat gotta-leave-this-town kinda show tune.” He pauses and deadpans, “We don’t know how to write those kinds of tunes.”
Credit: Casey G. Ford
Credit: Casey G. Ford
Instead, we get a scene mocking the avant-garde, performed by Youth and his mom, aptly titled “Mother” in the script. (Side note: Mother is played beautifully by Atlanta stage legend Latrice Pace, who rips the roof off and knocks the wind out of you every time she begins to sing.)
As the lead, Youth leaps, swoops and swirls across the stage, seamlessly shifting from one phase of this developing artist’s identity and adopted persona to another. Sharing a similar amount of time onstage, Raymond’s narrator shows us what it’s like to run the equivalent of an acting and singing marathon without ever breaking a sweat. It’s stunning to watch.
Through dynamic and engaging movement, in the assured hands of director and choreographer Thomas W. Jones II, every character’s action is punctuated by the unpredictable.
It’s a welcome gift to have Jones at the helm of this show. An award-winning writer, director and performer who frequents stages all over the country, he has a special place in Atlanta theater history as the founder and co-artistic director of gone-but-never-forgotten Jomandi Productions. It was a crown jewel of Atlanta theater from the 1970s through the 1990s and at one point the third-largest Black theater in the U.S.
Credit: Casey G. Ford
Credit: Casey G. Ford
With song titles like “Must’ve Been High,” “We Just Had Sex” and “Youth’s Unfinished Song,” there are obvious reverberations of “Hair,” of course. The way this piece smartly pays homage to, and satirizes, musical theater’s different eras makes it a predecessor of sorts to the recent Apple TV series “Schmigadoon.”
Another standout in this exceptional cast is Trevor Rayshay Perry, who plays a variety of characters with equal gusto but brings a particular poignancy and emotional subtlety to the role as a church choir director who bestows Youth with the words to describe the feeling of never quite belonging to any one world or identity.
There are also chuckles aplenty. When Youth and his fellow punk rock bandmates (“The Stereotypes”) drop acid as teenagers, their trip quickly descends into nightmare mode when they think about one day turning 30. (“My life is over and I haven’t even been to Sea World yet!” one cries.)
And finally, credit to the superb musical direction by S. Renee Clark and the live band that pulverizes the airwaves with each glorious strum of electric guitar and slam of the drums. Plus, kudos to the scenic design by Isabel and Moriah Curley-Clay, which is serving “Dreamgirls” meets “Mad Max: Fury Road,” all stereos and neon lights from floor to ceiling.
As a final note, this show won Best Book of a Musical at the Tonys in 2009, about which Stew humbly joked in a Q&A published by Harvard, where he teaches musical theater writing: “Somehow I won a Tony Award — I think there was a raffle that year or something.” But it’s hardly an accident.
True to the musical theatrical tradition, Act II comes in even stronger than the first, though I won’t spoil that here. Suffice it to say, that’s where the meta-narrative reaches its peak, tapping into deeper questions about how and why we create art and whether being an artist requires some amount of delusion to keep going. After all, there’s a tension that exists between courage and self-indulgence whenever you decide to fully commit to a profession that capitalist systems rarely reward. (Case in point: We have the recently victorious Hollywood writers’ strike, which revolved around some incredibly existential questions about the value of artistic work that are as timely as ever.)
Most profoundly, the show asks us to consider the hard truths around performative pain. Truly, it’s all insightful stuff. But, man, is it also fun.
THEATER REVIEW
“Passing Strange”
Through Oct. 22. 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 2:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. $15-$65. Balzer Theater at Herren’s, 84 Luckie St. NW, Atlanta. 678-528-1500, theatricaloutfit.org
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Alexis Hauk has written and edited for numerous newspapers, alt-weeklies, trade publications and national magazines, including Time, The Atlantic, Mental Floss, Uproxx and Washingtonian. Having grown up in Decatur, Alexis returned to Atlanta in 2018 after a decade living in Boston, Washington, D.C., New York City and Los Angeles. By day, she works in health communications. By night, she enjoys covering the arts and being Batman.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
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