Passing Strange

In rethinking the Tony-winning 2008 rock musical Passing Strange for the screen, director Spike Lee made sure to do the right thing: not fuck up what worked like gangbusters onstage. Lee and the masterful cinematographer Matthew Libatique (Iron Man, Inside Man) brought their HD cameras to Broadway's Belasco Theatre to film two live performances with the original cast.

IN the last scene of the Spike Lee movie of "Passing Strange," which captures a curtain call for the musical, Colman Domingo is crying. This tall, sculptured, vamp-ready actor — who during each performance had played the flamboyant, stoic choir director Franklin Jones, the Germanic radical Joop and the Berlin performance artist Mr. Venus — has tears streaming down his face.

When I first saw “Passing Strange” on Broadway a little more than a year ago, I admired it, but with some reservations. This musical story of adolescent rebellion and artistic self-discovery, written by Stew (with music by him and Heidi Rodewald) from the raw material of Stew’s own life, simmered with energy and ideas, with sonic and verbal wit, but it also strained for a soaring, transcendent theatricality [...] Vai alla recensione »