If you frequented the better L.A. rock clubs during the 90s and early 2000s, you were likely acquainted with the work of Stew. First with his band, The Negro Problem, and later as a solo act, the talented singer-songwriter’s between-song patter was half the thoughtful fun. Still, it’s a pleasant surprise to find Stew headlining his own Broadway show, a clever combination of traditional musical theater and a wordy musical performance. This version of “Passing Strange” is not so much a movie in a traditional sense but a very well done video documentation by Spike Lee of the show staged by director Annie Dorsen. As narrated both in spoken word and song by the volubly imposing Stew, it’s a presumably autobiographical coming-of-age tale dealing with the travels of an artistically inclined young man (Daniel Breaker), first through the tail end of his middle-class upbringing in South Central L.A. and conflicts with his religious mother (Eisa Davis), and then on to the sex-and-drug positive bohemian enclaves of Amsterdam and Berlin. As you can imagine, it’s a heady journey and Stew’s narrative and Dorsen’s witty staging keep things hopping. At times, “Passing Strange” falls prey to the same artistic pretensions it skewers, and I remember liking Stew’s older music a bit better than the songs he and his life/songwriter partner, Heidi Rodewald, created for the show. Nevertheless, as preserved for posterity by Lee, this is a consistently thought-provoking, funny, and moving theatrical look at growing up creative and ethnic in an ever changing world.
