"So come down now, remove your bandage so I can see your damage more than the law allows. So come down now, remove your bandage so I can see you’re damaged more than the law allows. " ~the negro problem

I'm back, in a slightly better mood, to tell y'all about the amazing musical Nic and I saw last night (it was a great end to a disappointing day). I would tell everyone to go see it but it closes today. It was a limited run and it extended through June, which was great because that allowed more people to see it, but I wish it would extend again so that it could touch even more people. It's called Passing Strange. It's Stew's musical; he wrote the book and lyrics and cowrote the music (and he's also in the show). If you don't already know who Stew is, go buy some CDs by STEW or The Negro Problem (they're basically the same band; they pretty much just switched their name from The Negro Problem to STEW and then back to The Negro Problem). Adam Duritz (Counting Crows' frontman, one of my favorite singers ever) raves about Stew here (beware; this rave goes on for what amounts to something like 20 pages). Here's a quote from Adam Duritz in case you don't have a few hours to devote to reading his entire article:

"I’m not gonna lie to you, and let me get this out of the way right here at the top of this article, he (Stew) is flat-out unquestionably no doubt in my mind whatsoever the finest songwriter working today. He is so far and above my favorite that I can’t even think of anyone working in the same stratosphere as him, at least not off the top of my head."

Stew's band has had Entertainment Weekly's Album of the Year multiple times. They've gotten much critical acclaim and they're insanely talented. And they decided to write a musical, which I think is totally awesome (in case you haven't noticed, I'm obsessed with musical theater). They pulled it off, too. Passing Strange is wonderful.

Here are a few pull-quotes from some reviews:

“STEW tweaks the received wisdom of racial identity as cannily and wittily as any playwright since George C. Wolfe when he unleashed The Colored Museum in 1986.” ~Eric Grode, The New York Sun

"Not since Stephen Sondheim introduced a kind of Jewish skepticism and irony to the Broadway musical, in the nineteen-fifties, and Tony Kushner revolved his 2003 show, "Caroline, or Change," around the ways in which class intersects with race have we had such a finely crafted, ethnic-minded American musical as Passing Strange (at the Public). "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. Unlike Sondheim and Kushner, the musician and singer 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." ~Hilton Als, The New Yorker

“Passing Strange introduces an exciting new voice to contemporary musical theater. Part concert, part book musical with driving rock music and a tart satiric tone – Passing Strange defies generic categories. It dares in its playful way to honor those big questions that have set adolescent souls yearning for centuries. How to discover and be true to your convictions, how to live a meaningful life, and still pay the bills, how to find the understanding you need with out throwing away the love you’re offered.” ~Charles Isherwood, The New York Times

So if Passing Strange ever returns to the stage or if you come across the cast recording, check it out. And, in the meantime, go buy some albums by The Negro Problem and STEW.