What is Passing Strange?

Is it a musical for rock lovers or for musical haters? For the deluded young or for the old-looking-to-be-hip? For musical know-nothings who just want the experience or for the socially and politically conscious?

It takes only a few minutes to realize: whatever it qualifies as, I'm sure it's for everyone.

The story arc follows the life of the narrator, Stew, a life lived based on "the decision of a stoned teenager." Disenchanted with his suburban life as a young African-American told to be something by his mother and his church that he knows he isn't, Stew takes the advice of his Pastor's flamboyant son (the hilarious Colman Domingo) and runs off to Europe for a life as a traveling songwriter. It is what alienated teenagers always say they will do, but never, you know, actually go about doing. The results are crazy, entertaining, and as real as the show's composer and writer Stew's life was, for it is the story of his life on stage.

The transitions from suburban California to Amsterdam to Berlin are flawlessly done - there is a clear sense that this is in a theater, yes, but between the awesome light-board background consisting of a halogen array of purple, blue, and orange that would make electricians green with envy and the seven actors' transformations from punk rockers to cafe waitresses to down-with-the-system Berliners, there is no way anyone could not be drawn to every event in Stew's life. Stew rocks along with his electric guitar, preaching the story's narration from behind a podium, as his "youth" double, played by an enticing Daniel Breaker lives the elder's life on stage.

Stew is the score's composer, and fear not if you cringe at the prospect of a "musical" consisting of dancing and singing your problems away to show tunes - a four-piece rock band is part of the stage (they rise, literally, from its depths) and accompanies each song. The opening riff still finds itself stuck in my head nearly a week later.

So is Passing Strange a musical? For those willing to stop trying to define "musical," Passing Strange can remain what it is at its very core, and what makes it more that just good: an experience of the Real.