The Offical Passing Strange Love Thread (Scaryotypes Unite)

[joe5]

Posted: 3/12/08 at 10:54am

I can't wait to see it again and again. Since my return to Boston after the Sunday Mat.. All I can say is I love this show!!!


Updated On: 4/9/08 at 10:54 AM

[blaxx]

Posted: 3/12/08 at 2:32pm

I support your thread...go Passing Strange!

[jaystarr]

Posted: 3/12/08 at 2:33pm

It's about time!

J*

[aliciag]

Posted: 3/12/08 at 4:35pm

I will definitely add to the love for this show. Can't wait until I get the chance to see it again!

[dave1606]

Posted: 3/12/08 at 6:23pm

So good! i am working on trying to see it again on easter weekend. i will be forcing friends and family to go!

[BenKaye]

Posted: 3/12/08 at 6:33pm

Passing Strange is an amazing theatrical experience!!!!

I'm so happy that I'm seeing this again!

[slimandslam]

Posted: 3/12/08 at 10:33pm

I love Stew and Heidi.

And Passing Strange wasn't so bad, either.

Note to those who can't wait for the CD: four of the songs in the show are available on albums by Stew or The Negro Problem. "I Must Have Been High" and "Arlington Hill" are all available on Stew's album The Naked Dutch Painter and Other Songs (both as part of "The Drug Suite"); "Love Like That" appears on Stew's Something Deeper Than These Changes; and "Come Down Now" is on The Negro Problem's Joys & Concerns. All of these songs were reworked somewhat for the show.

[thetinymagic2]

Posted: 3/13/08 at 12:31am

me, too...
Feel the Real!!!
... and it's ALLLLL Riiiiiiiigghhtt!!!

[LimelightMike]

Posted: 3/13/08 at 12:34am

Amen, Amen, AMEN!
Brothers & Sisters -
I urge, nay, implore you to feel the warmth, spread the buzz, find the real. Much, much love. I look at this show as 'my movement' - our movement - Let's make this one live long and prosper.

[beyondblessed]

Posted: 3/13/08 at 1:14am

This is one bandwagon that I will not hesitate to join. I caught the matinee today and was blow away. I haven't cried at a broadway show in almost two years, but the climax and message of the show had me bawling like a two year old. And just guess who was seated two rows behind me.... Nobel Laureate/Pulitzer winner Toni Morrison. This was just a day of awe. I can't wait to see this show again.

[thetinymagic2]

Posted: 3/13/08 at 1:22am

If you sit in Row A or B, you will experience the Art and Ego (Nowhaus-style performance art) of Mr. Colman Domingo! Stay in your seat. Be afraid. Be very afraid.............. (he he..)

[LimelightMike]

Posted: 3/13/08 at 1:27am

tiny, I can't even begin...

Sitting there, I literally sank in my seat. I was nervous, honest-to-goodness. I didn't know WHAT to expect, and he was looking DEAD at me - THE ENTIRE TIME! Wouldn't have wanted it ANY. OTHER. WAY.

[MusicAndPassion]

Posted: 3/13/08 at 8:34am

I haven't seen Passing Strange yet, and don't really have interest in it. What makes it so good? I've heard amazing things and am gonna try to see it soon.

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 3/13/08 at 8:51am

Passing Strange is not your traditional musical theater piece in any sense of the imagination. Stew has not been shy in making it known that he's not a fan of traditional musical theater and his piece, skillfully directed by Annie Dorsen (who I'm told is big in the downtown/cabaret scene), reflects that.

Passing Strange turns the traditional musical theater form on its ear, creating neither a 100% book musical nor a 100% sung-through rock opera.

Stew's score (co-written with collaborist Heidi Rodewald) does not bastardize the traditional rock sound to make it more accessable for the blue-haired matinee ladies. His lyrics are intelligent and witty (he makes mention of, among others, "Brother Al Camus," which managed to impress me, for some inexplicable reason; one of the songs begins with "right here's where we'd write a show-tune, but nobody her knows how!")

[WaltSummersPI]

Posted: 3/13/08 at 9:41am

Easily the best new show of the season.

"And suddenly there was meaning..."

[joe5]

Posted: 3/13/08 at 2:06pm

Keep the love flowing. I'll be back in May to see again.

[LimelightMike]

Posted: 3/13/08 at 2:20pm

*smiles*

[thetinymagic2]

Posted: 3/13/08 at 2:50pm

MusicandP: Yankee's "descrip" is pretty good, but trust us, it is a live experience that you have to see and hear for yourself. For me, personally, the POETRY.LYRICS are everything, and STEW's innate stage presence pervades and integrates the whole thing. If you let this piece of musical ingenuity and soul invade you for 2 hours, you might examine your life differently forever, and be happier!

[verynewyorkcurious]

Posted: 3/13/08 at 5:09pm

Love.

I didn't check the grosses until just now. I am happy it made almost twice as much this past week than the week before. I am hopeful that they will hang in there until the Tony's. Updated On: 3/13/08 at 05:09 PM

[stagescreen]

Posted: 3/13/08 at 5:16pm

Can't wait until I'm back in NYC at the end of the month. I've got tickets to PASSING STRANGE, front row on the aisle! I've been playing the demos from the website on my radio show the past couple of weeks. I hope my listeners like it and see the show when they go up to New York.

[jv92]

Posted: 3/13/08 at 5:21pm

"Stew has not been shy in making it known that he's not a fan of traditional musical theater"

Here's my problem with people like Stew and Duncan Sheik writing for the theatre. They all go on about how they don't like traditional musical theatre and how they're doing something new and innovative and that strikes me as extremly pretentious and stupid. Why are you writing for the musical theatre if you don't like it? It's not like in order to be new you have to hate the old. You can like the traditional musical and still create new and interesting theatre. For example, Sondheim has said he likes the traditional musical. We certainly get that enthusiasm and love for the old musical in much of his work, still, his work was quite innovative and still is. But he honnors the old in his work. His shows' songs sitll follow the story, tell the story and his music respects the musicals of days gone by.
People that come and blow up the musical and say, "I hate musicals. I'm going to do something with crappy neon lighting, electric guitars and a hard to follow plot with practically no character development" are not being innovative. They're being naive and show how little they know about the theatre.
I have great respect for a show like In the Heights, which I did not love. It was pleasant enough, but I didn't adore it. However, its authors obviously have an affection for the musical theatre and its ways of telling a story and despite the new sounds and rhythms heard in In the Heights, it pays respect to the old and I tip my hat to all involved in that show.
Remember, Company advanced the theatre, but it didn't try to make people forget Oklahoma!.

[BkCollector]

Posted: 3/13/08 at 5:36pm

I don't think it's a pre-requisite for a musical theater piece to involve itself at all with what has come before it. It's only through a complete departure from what has come before did true groundbreaking work happen in my opinion. Besides, when people like Stew and Sheik say these things, they don't mean all of musical theater, Today's musical theater is so diverse, that's not what they are talking about. They are talking about the "golden age" song/scene book musical. When they say "I hate musical theater" they mean that they hate the traditional form of it. But a look at their work can easily spot it's equally groundbreaking MT predecessors through their musical and dramatic structure.

One has to take into account who they are talking to when they say these things, as well. They're talking to the general public, for whom "Musical Theater" either means South Pacific and Oklahoma or Phantom of the Opera and Disney. The varied multi-genred canon of shows that we all know doesn't really enter into it.

Just my two cents.

[joe5]

Posted: 3/14/08 at 10:15am

jv92, I admire new works that take a different approach. The theatre scene is evoling. There is something for everyones taste these days. Again this is a love thread. You apparently have no love for this show. So I really don't understand why you posted here. thanks joe

Updated On: 3/14/08 at 10:15 AM

[thetinymagic2]

Posted: 3/19/08 at 12:40am

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aGwkh2gxS1Z8&refer=muse

Interesting financial analysis of PS transfer to bway. How accurate do you think these figures really are??
Mistake: it's at the Belasco, NOT the Lyceum. Get a proofreader, Bloomberg News.

[chris d]

Posted: 3/19/08 at 5:22pm

I just got back from today's matinee... it's the best thing I've ever seen. it was just exhilarating from beginning to end. I loved it. I'm going to try my hardest to see it again (I've got about 12 days to do so).