One-Man Farrago @ Berkeley Rep
*Stew, in His Own Juices*/Play Review:/ Passing Strange, /by Stew, at //Berkeley// Rep/.
Even though it boasts a talented cast as well as a bevy of top-tier
collaborators and designers, /Passing Strange/ feels like a one-man
show: a personal vehicle for Stew, its composer/lyricist/narrator. He’s
in your face for pretty much the entire two-act farrago – singing,
riffing, whacking his guitars (electric and acoustic), goading his
characters to action or challenging the audience with sly asides.
He’s a rotund, deadpan little fellow with curiously truncated gestures,
like a Mister Potatohead. His one-syllable sobriquet, Stew, well befits
his onstage persona: meaty, nourishing, but somehow warmed-over, an
improvised assemblage of odd tidbits.
The name is evidently self-invented. So is his musical idiom (mixing
rap, punk rock, beerhall ballads and cabaret) and even his diction (by
turns street-smart jivey or allusively erudite).
Stew’s process of self-invention forms the slender plotline of the show.
His nameless, but evidently autobiographic, protagonist (Daniel Breaker)
starts out as a reluctant choirboy in a black, middle-class Baptist
church in L.A. He toys with pot and acid and all kinds of music in a
self-conscious quest for what’s “really real.” Nobody at home
understands him, not even his dotingly bemused mother (Eisa Davis).
So he follows the James Baldwin trail to Europe, first basking in the
free-love-and-dope Lotusland of Amersterdam and then plunging into the
edgy political and artistic milieu of Berlin. As a black, he’s lionized
in Europe for his presumed first-hand insight into American perfidy and
hypocricy.
Yet his mother’s constant phone calls keep him naggingly aware that his
supportive, middle-class background hardly matches up to his Berlin pose
of ghettoized grievance. Year after year he keeps ducking his mother’s
entreaties to come home for Christmas. In the end he misses one
Christmas too many and winds up flying back to L.A. only in time for her
funeral – an inkling, at last, of what’s “really real.”
All this could be ponderous or mawkish if related in deadly earnest. But
Stew mostly steers clear of such pitfalls and teases out the ironies of
his story.
In this he’s mightily helped by his cast – not only his two protagonists
but also a quartet of supporting actors (De’Adre Aziza, Colman Domingo,
Rebecca Naomi Jones and Chad Goodridge). They play everyone from teenage
heart-throbs to crusty old uncles to flutey church ladies to stoners to
drag queens to German anarchists. They shift roles with dizzying
panache, equally at home singing, dancing or acting.
All the more impressive given the booby-trapped theater-in-the-round
apron they’re playing on. At the start of the play, Stew shares the
stage with a keyboard-player, a drummer, an all-around sideman and
bassist Heidi Rodenwald (his co-composer and longtime partner). But,
after the opening number, the musicians and their instruments half-sink
into the floor on four separate elevator platforms.
To keep the frenetic cast from tumbling into these pits must have
presented no mean challenge to director Annie Dorson and choreographer
Karole Armitage. Mercifully, at least, designer David Korins has given
them a cool, uncluttered set to work with – just some chairs and a
couple of clothes racks for the many quick costume changes.
For the L.A. scenes, these props are set in front of a scrim of white
parachute cloth, lit from behind with either solid colors or spangles
and splotches as the mood of each scene dictates. Only when the action
shifts to Europe is the scrim-curtain drawn back to reveal the
underlying light source: an array of fluorescent tubes and incandescent
bulbs that are switched in constantly shifting colors and patterns to
match the onstage action.
In the final scenes, back in L.A., the scrim returns, but this time in
black. Back-lit by the lightbulb array, it makes for an effect a bit
like Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”
With such ingenious touches, such an energetic cast, such an original
concept and such a humane heart, there’s a lot to like in “Passing
Strange.” It’s an A-list effort; everyone connected with the show boasts
a first-class pedigree of Broadway, regional and European credits.
And yet, for me at least, the music sometimes palls. In a program note
interview, when asked about his transition from cabaret performance
(where he made his fame) to a full-length play, Stew declares that
crating Passing Strange felt like “just writing one big song.” All too
often it sounds like it.
There are a few stand-out numbers, mostly where he spoofs other genres
to underscore an irony, as in a wonderful soft-shoe number in which our
hero flaunts his chic negritude to European fans. But a lot of the
connective tissue is ploddingly pedestrian hip-hop, hard-pressed to
sustain musical interest for a production this long.
Still, Passing Strange is well worth a run down I-5 before early
December, when it ends its run here and decamps for New York’s
prestigious Public Theater (which joined Berkeley Rep to co-produce the
show).
Labels: Reviews
