‘Passing Strange’ has a belated — and muddled — L.A. premiere at Pasadena Playhouse

In 2014, I wrote a column wondering why “Passing Strange,” the musical by Stew and Heidi Rodewald (created in collaboration with Annie Dorsen, the show’s original director), still hadn’t received an L.A. production. Had I known then that it would have taken another 12 years and that when the show finally made it to L.A. it would be without Stew serving as narrator and frontman, I think I would have been fairly incredulous.

Better later than never? The new production that opened Sunday at Pasadena Playhouse has left me wondering.

I first saw “Passing Strange” at Berkeley Rep in 2006, completely uninitiated in Stew and Rodewald’s music catalog. In 2008, when “Passing Strange” made it to Broadway, I was once again transported by Stew’s coming-of-age tale and the sophisticated quality of the score.

Stew never became part of my music library, but I was deeply impressed by his lyric writing and thought he and Rodewald might be just what the contemporary musical needed. (I was still holding out hope when I reviewed their shaky new musical “Family Album” at Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2014, but I saw just how much they depended on the right collaborative team.)

Johnny Laveie, Devere Rogers, Britton Smith, Tanerélle and Brittany Campbell in the Pasadena Playhouse production of “Passing Strange.”

(Jeff Lorch)

I had been hearing about the genesis of “Passing Strange” through Dorsen, who was a directing intern at the McCarter Theatre when I was the literary manager and has remained a friend. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting to like the musical as much as I did when I flew up to Berkeley, but I was blown away. Even though the show was still coming together, Stew struck me as a musical poet of extraordinary depth. And when “Passing Strange” was up for the best musical Tony Award in 2008, I was disappointed that it lost to “In the Heights.” (Stew won for best book of a musical, a consolation prize and not really the strongest aspect of the show.)

Maybe my expectations for the Pasadena Playhouse production were pitched too high. When I heard that Zhailon Levingston was directing “Passing Strange,” I was thrilled at the prospect. (Earlier this year, Levingston won a Tony with Bill Rauch for directing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” reimagined in the queer terms of a Harlem ballroom competition.)

Pasadena Playhouse has done some inspired work in its cycle of landmark American musicals, including last spring’s spectacular “Brigadoon,” a golden age relic that I wasn’t exactly itching to see, but, boy, am I glad that I did. If anyone could reignite “Passing Strange” without Stew in the cast, I felt sure that the Playhouse and Levingston would find a way.

Saycon Sengbloh in “Passing Strange” at Pasadena Playhouse.

(Jeff Lorch)

I’m sorry to report that the production left me cold. Perhaps my sensibility has changed in the 20 years since I first saw “Passing Strange.” But some of the problems I had with the production mirrored my reservations about Levingston and Rauch’s radical reworking of “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” a revival I enjoyed more for its kinetic atmosphere than for its musical theater finesse.

Both shows are infused with tremendous fourth-wall-busting energy. There’s no observed proscenium buffer between stage and auditorium. Before “Passing Strange” gets underway, Ty Taylor, who plays the Narrator, struts out in sneering indie rocker fashion and goads theatergoers to applaud him with proper gusto.

Stew’s presence onstage was, of course, the genuine article. The story is based on his life as a young Black teen growing up in South Central and escaping to Europe at the first opportunity to find the freedom to become the artist he’s not yet sure how to become.

Taylor isn’t doing an impersonation of Stew. Far from it. He’s inventing his own character, but I’m not sure that the musical storytelling supports a fully autonomous narrator. I found it hard to figure out what my relationship to this arch and sometimes contemptuous figure was supposed to be.

For all Stew’s rough edges, his lyrics are born out of the crucible of his own identity battles. His stage presence only reinforced the pathos of what he finally found words to record. Taylor’s Narrator recedes from focus, and even when his emotion rises to the scalding moment, it seems as if he’s presiding over someone else‘s story.

Britton Smith in “Passing Strange” at Pasadena Playhouse.

(Jeff Lorch)

The fault of the production, however, lies elsewhere. The 2024 European premiere at London’s Young Vic, directed by Liesl Tommy, managed to be a critical hit without Stew in the cast. There’s a more generalized problem with Levingston’s approach to the material.

The acting is blurry, broad and attitudinizing. “Passing Strange” isn’t sentimental — at least until the end — but it isn’t afraid of sincerity. For the show to work, the audience must be sympathetically invested in the journey of Youth (Britton Smith).

The hauntingly introspective quality of the lyrics charts Youth’s confounding artistic path. How can this young man find his voice when he feels forced to perform different versions of his Blackness? He runs into one set of authenticity problems growing up in the American Black Church and another set in Amsterdam and Berlin, when he takes up with political rebels and avant-garde radicals and morphs into a more progressive stereotype.

Daniel Breaker, who was nominated for a Tony for his featured performance as Youth, let us into the character’s conflicted heart. Smith, by contrast, seems so caught up in the frenzy of the production that the emotional stakes of the dramatic situations haven’t a chance to fully register.

As with “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” I appreciated the in-your-face theatrics more than the execution of musical numbers. Devere Rogers, who plays (among other roles) Mr. Franklin, Rev. Jones’ wayward son who fans the flames of Youth’s subversive impulses, was particularly chaotic in his comic lampooning. His portrayal of Mr. Venus, an outlandishly edgy performance artist from West Berlin, is even less controlled than his frantic antics in the Echo Theater Company production of “The Peterson Show” earlier this season — a feat that I wouldn’t have imagined possible.

Tanerélle, Devere Rogers, Britton Smith, Brittany Campbell and Johnny Laveie in “Passing Strange.”

(Jeff Lorch)

The women in the cast fare much better. Saycon Sengbloh, who plays Mother, has an exquisite voice and a sensitive manner that not even this production can extinguish. Brittany Campbell grounds Desi, Youth’s Berlin lover and mentor, with an emotional backbone. Tanerélle, while rather grand in gesture and tone, at least gives some human dimension to Marianna, the woman who welcomes Youth into her Amsterdam world by offering him her “Keys” (the title of one of the show’s most affecting numbers).

Youth’s protracted European sojourn is treated more or less like a cartoon. And while there’s plenty of parody in the show, the protagonist’s education as a young, Black, gifted and rather adrift artist is something we ought to be able to take more seriously.

Lawrence E. Moten III’s scenic design leaves a cramped concert-stage impression. Devario D. Simmons’ costumes accentuate the move away from anything resembling realism. Tislarm Bouie’s choreography doesn’t aspire to polished smoothness. Greg Nabours’ music direction was hard to evaluate amid the show’s murky sound quality.

Perhaps I’m remembering the show I want to remember. I’ll watch Spike Lee’s film of the Broadway production again and refresh my memory. I held off, hoping to embrace a completely new vision of the musical. But my disappointment has only brought the past more prominently to light.