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Passing Strange

 


When: 5th July 2024

Where: Young Vic, London

Writer: Stew Stewart and Heidi Rodewald

Director: Liesl Thomas 



The first thing that stands out about Passing Strange is the performers, every single one of them from the band to the ensemble to the narrator were phenomenal. The casting of Giles Terera as the narrator is perfect, his charisma from the moment he steps on stage is electric. The style of the production is very chatty, ignoring any existence of a fourth wall and bringing its audience along for the ride and Terera plays a brilliant leader for this. Similarly the way in which the ensemble move into and out of the stage space and for that matter the auditorium feels as though the characters of the story are infiltrating the audiences space rather than the audience simply being onlookers. Through this the ensembles range is also tested, at points it feels experimentalist, perhaps verging on University drama with the mad over exaggerated characters and playing with stereotypes, but this is by no means a bad thing. The characters that the ensemble creates are larger than life and they work within the punk rock, hallucinatory themes of the production.  

More than anything I have seen before this show is the music, at times it even feels like a concert, through this it gives it's performers the space to showcase their vocal ability. The vocal performances of the cast are unlike anything you would have heard in a musical before. It feels as though the performers have been left to add their own touches to their singing adding riffs and embellishment, the melodies are complex allowing Terera and the rest of the cast to highlight their vocal agility and training. The Band are also celebrated, as an extension of the idea that the music is the show they have been brought on stage, this allows them to interact with the characters and the audience, becoming part of the story in their own right.

I've mentioned already the punk rock and hallucinatory themes of this production and the way in which the music is used as the story, it's this and more that made this piece so fascinating. It has a very artistic style, each moment could be a single frame telling it's own individual story, the production even plays with this having a camera recording small snip-its of the action and projecting them onto the back wall using effects such as filters or slo-mo to incorporate it into the shows style. This is also used in a filmic way at times, for example when our young lead gets high in Amsterdam the camera focuses on their faces twisting and manipulating them giving us the impression that they are in a hallucinatory state. The lighting on the screen is then replicated in the audience giving us the impression of being in a similar state. This is a very bold production never shying away from its aims or themes and truly giving the audience the same experience, which then makes the final moments of grieving the mothers death even more heart-breaking. 

The only weakness of the piece was the story, whilst the storytelling is beautiful the story itself felt weak to me, it became only one small part of a much bigger thing and in this way it felt like much of it was glossed over or loosely strung together. Perhaps this was on purpose portraying how distant he had been from his own life. 

This is a show that needs to be experienced to be understood. I think it was brilliantly put together and I could see this production having a strong cult following, but it definitely seems to have flown a little under the radar in London's Musical scene. 

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