Culture | Theatre The Evening Standard's journalism is supported by our readers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Style and swagger mask a lack of substance in this semi-autobiographical 2008 rock-gig musical from American writer-musician Stew, about a young black man trying to find himself as a person and an artist.
A charismatic Giles Terera fronts a tight three-piece band, working through a variety of song genres and passing fondly ironic commentary on the picaresque journey of the character known only as the Youth (Keenan Munn-Francis) to a form of enlightenment. The story, originally created by Stew with director Annie Dorsen, is simultaneously familiar, sketchy, self-indulgent and pretentious, but it’s told in Liesl Tommy’s new production with undeniable verve and brio. The title comes from Othello where “passing” means “extremely”, but refers here also to black people who “pass” for white.
The Youth has a cosy, churchy, middle-class life with his mother in suburban 1970s LA and embraces marijuana and punk – mild forms of both, it seems – to escape. Amsterdam brings him more dope, sex and some low-level consciousness-raising. The cartoonish version of Berlin he then fetches up in is scarier, full of riots, amphetamines and politicised performance artists who challenge his invented tales of ghetto oppression.
Finally, loss teaches him that “the real is a construct” and that he can only truly be hims.