A hit on Broadway in 2008, filmed by Spike Lee in 2009, why has Passing Strange taken so long to traverse the pond? A cross between a gig and an operatic musical, it is vibrant, comical and has a glorious central performance from Giles Terera, who holds it all together as the semi-autobiographical Narrator on Ben Stones’s wedge-shaped set—a band rehearsal room—squats in Amsterdam and Berlin. Stones’s charming costumes include punk Mohicans and toilet rolls.
An LA ‘Candide’ learning about the facts of life and politics in Amsterdam and Berlin, the title from Othello, act 1 scene 3, who tells Desdemona his story. But ‘passing’ takes on several meanings in this play on words: Youth (Keenan Munn-Francis), the Narrator’s younger self, is from churchgoing, black, middle-class LA, who has to pass as a “negro” from the ghetto (“his alternative voice”) to make his type of music. A bit like Cord Jefferson’s 2023 film American Fiction. His mother (Rachel Adedeji) resorts to “negro dialect” when she scolds him…
Is this all a “passing phase”? She wants him to join the church choir, he falls in with the druggie set, who join him in his mum’s garage. He goes to Amsterdam to find himself—spliffs and strong coffee and free sex, threesomes even. He falls in love, but can’t write from a place of comfort, so sets off for Berlin, in the eighties all squats and revolutionaries, LSD and Molotov cocktails. He falls in with the posturing Nowhaus set.
All fake really—they educate him in left-wing politics but go home for Christmas. But he’s fake, too. He turns his mother down and stays in Berlin. Her death brings him home and maybe some wisdom. “You know, it's weird when you wake up in the morning and realise that your entire adult life was based on a decision made by a teenager. A stoned teenager.” Terera delivers his Youth’s story from a place of experience with a gleam in his eye.
Many black Americans went to Europe to discover themselves and to get away from white American oppression. James Baldwin is mentioned, and I think of Sidney Bechet who moved to France for his career. This story starts in 1976. Do I hear Gauloises and Camus’s Outsider mentioned in these stylish, clever, racy-pacy camp lyrics?
There is no fourth wall, knowing looks become stalls invasions and interactions: we are told to clap and wave our arms in the air, our images projected on the back walls. “You ready to go?”—you bet we are. It starts with a blast, Amsterdam is chill, but Berlin is too strained. Cabaret is sampled in a pastiche song. Riffs and references… But “song is only a balm”, “passing for love”, it doesn't heal.
Funny, serious, the lyrics are smart, the heavily amplified terrific music a range of styles, church happy-clappy, heavy rock, punk, and jazzy ballad. The onstage band is what I come for—those wailing guitars... There are three guitars, three keyboards, and a drummer with his set in a studio style cubicle: Ikechukwu Onwuagbu bass, Nick Pinchbeck keyboards / guitar, James Taylor drums and Art Terry keyboards / guitar. Sound designer is Tom Gibbons.
The supporting cast of four—opening as chilled backing singers—play many parts and are outstanding with powerful voices and wobbly accents: David Albury, Nadia Violet Johnson, Renée Lamb and Caleb Roberts.
Richard Howell’s lighting and Will Duke’s video design is trippy (reminds me a tiny bit of my misspent youth in San Francisco’s Fillmore West), Dickson Mbi’s choreography keeps them moving in the right places and they are good movers. Liesl Tommy directs with her tongue firmly in her cheek. Impressive.