Passing Strange, a rock musical set in 1970s Los Angeles, is now receiving its first Southern California stage production at Pasadena Playhouse. The show previously reached national audiences through a Spike Lee film of the Broadway production, broadcast on PBS. The Pasadena engagement runs through November 29, with opening night set for this Sunday.
The show made its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre on October 19, 2006, according to Concord Theatricals. It went on to open on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre on February 8, 2008, played 165 performances there, and crossed over to London as well. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the original cast won the 2008 Obie Award for ensemble at New York's Public Theater. Spike Lee filmed the production's penultimate night at the Belasco, and PBS broadcast that recording in 2010 as part of its Great Performances series.
A Musical Built on a Mantra
Created by Stew and Heidi Rodewald, Passing Strange follows a young Black Angeleno who leaves his single mother and the middle-class life he knows to pursue artistic ambition and a sense of identity. The musical also considers how families pass cultural knowledge between generations. Its title comes from Shakespeare’s Othello, according to the Los Angeles Times. The creators and critics have described the show as closer to a rock or cabaret experience than a conventional book musical.
The original Berkeley auditions included a requirement to sing a punk rock song. The 2006 cast included Eisa Davis, Daniel Breaker, Rebecca Naomi Jones and Coleman Domingo.
Why It Took So Long to Reach L.A.
There is no single documented explanation for why the musical took so long to reach a Southern California stage. A 2014 Los Angeles Times column reported that Stew had received offers from theaters in several other cities but knew of no Los Angeles offers. Center Theatre Group’s then-artistic director, Michael Ritchie, cited scheduling, while Pasadena Playhouse’s then-artistic director, Sheldon Epps, described the delay as a matter of timing rather than the show’s quality. The column also raised a theory that the economics of Los Angeles’ 99-Seat Theater Plan could make agents reluctant to give up an L.A. premiere designation for little compensation. Separately, a 2016 Los Angeles Times report said a distinct dispute over the plan concerned minimum wages for actors in Los Angeles County theaters; the plan initially meant a $9 hourly minimum. That later dispute does not establish why Passing Strange was delayed. Spike Lee’s film version opened the Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles in August 2009, but the stage production still had not played locally.
A Tony Winner Comes Home
Zhailon Levingston is directing the Pasadena production. He discovered Passing Strange on PBS at 15, later studied at AMDA College of the Performing Arts in Hollywood and lived in Los Angeles for four years. The 32-year-old director won this year’s Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical and also directed the Broadway revival of Cats: The Jellicle Ball.
Levingston brought up the show with Pasadena Playhouse artistic director Danny Feldman, who invited him to direct it. Levingston has said he did not want to reinvent the musical, though he sought actors with a punk sensibility for this staging. The Pasadena cast is led by Ty Taylor as the Narrator, Britton Smith as Youth and Saycon Sengbloh as Mother, according to Playbill.
A longer local theater history
The Pasadena Playhouse predates this production by more than a century: its official history says the theater was founded in 1917 and that its current landmarked building opened in 1925 at 39 S. El Molino, according to Pasadena Playhouse.
Los Angeles has its own history of Black-led theater institutions. The City of Los Angeles’ Cultural Treasures site says C. Bernard Jackson and Dr. J. Alfred Cannon formed the Inner City Cultural Center in 1965, after the Watts rebellion, to pursue their vision for the arts. That history offers local context but does not explain the timing of Passing Strange’s Pasadena staging.
Tickets and Showtimes
Passing Strange runs 2 hours and 30 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission. The Pasadena Playhouse production, staged at 39 S. El Molino Ave. in Pasadena according to the venue's own listing, performs at 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays, with tickets starting at $40. The box office can be reached at 626-356-7529.
