Passing Strange - Critical Reaction

Critical Reaction

Reviews on and off Broadway were positive. Charles Isherwood wrote in The New York Times: "Although it is far richer in wit, feeling and sheer personality than most of what is classified as musical theater in the neighborhood around Times Square these days, its big heart throbs to the sound of electric guitars, searing synthesizer chords, driving drums and lyrics delivered not in a clean croon but a throaty yelp... Passing Strange is bursting at the seams with melodic songs, and it features a handful of theatrical performances to treasure... Call it a rock concert with a story to tell, trimmed with a lot of great jokes. Or call it a sprawling work of performance art, complete with angry rants and scary drag queens... I'll just call it wonderful, and a welcome anomaly on Broadway." Hilton Als praised the storyline of the musical in The New Yorker: "Passing Strange is a brilliant work about migration — a geographical migration but also its hero’s migration beyond the tenets of “blackness” and toward selfhood. ...Stew, who created Passing Strange, which is an autobiography of sorts, doesn’t distract us with exoticism or nostalgia; his story centers on a young black man who discovers his own Americanness while growing up, first, in Los Angeles and, later, in Europe. The Youth (Daniel Breaker) is a rock-and-roll Candide — a wanderer whose innocence is never entirely corrupted."

Spike Lee's documentary of the play also received a positive review by A. O. Scott in The New York Times: "Here’s the strange thing. When I saw Spike Lee’s film adaptation, 'Passing Strange: The Movie,' in effect a video recording of a performance identical to the one I’d witnessed at the Belasco Theater in 2008, I was blown away. Loose ends ceased to dangle; soft spots were smoothed away and slow passages tightened up." Laremy Legel of Film.com called the film “vibrant and compelling” noting that Lee’s decision to shoot it as a play was the right one: “Spike Lee, to his credit, realized the beauty of the musical was right there on stage – no further tinkering was needed. Spike used 14 cameras at once to capture the action like it's never been done before. Amazingly, you never see a camera you weren't meant to see. Intimate shots were gathered in gorgeous high-definition over the course of three shows and seamlessly edited together. It's a technological triumph as well as an artistic one."