It’s a Hard Rock Life

“At this point in the play, we were planning a show tune,” says the roly-poly guy with the guitar and the funny eyeglasses. “An upbeat gotta-leave-this-town kinda show tune.”

It appears there’s a little problem. “We don’t know how to write those kind of tunes,” he adds, in a tone of shrugging apology.

This may seem a bit strange, since the roly-poly guy with the guitar and the funny eyeglasses happens to be standing on the stage of the Belasco Theater, where the exuberant new show “Passing Strange” opened on Thursday night.

But “Passing Strange” just ain’t a show tune kinda show, despite its arrival at a venerable Broadway theater where many a gotta-leave-this-town anthem has surely been sung. Although it is far richer in wit, feeling and sheer personality than most of what is classified as musical theater in the neighborhood around Times Square these days, its big heart throbs to the sound of electric guitars, searing synthesizer chords, driving drums and lyrics delivered not in a clean croon but a throaty yelp.

A rock ’n’ roll autobiography of an artist in search of himself, “Passing Strange” is bursting at the seams with melodic songs, and it features a handful of theatrical performances to treasure. It is undeniably playing on Broadway, after transferring from a summer run at the Public Theater downtown.

But please don’t call it a Broadway musical. You could scare away too many people who might actually enjoy it.

Call it a rock concert with a story to tell, trimmed with a lot of great jokes. Or call it a sprawling work of performance art, complete with angry rants and scary drag queens. Call it whatever you want, really. I’ll just call it wonderful, and a welcome anomaly on Broadway, which can use all the vigorous new artistic blood it can get.

The roly-poly guy is a singer-songwriter with a cult following who goes by the single name of Stew. He is the author of the show’s book and lyrics, the composer (with Heidi Rodewald) of its music, and its lead guitarist and musical narrator too.

With his bald dome, goofy aspect and neat black suit worn with sneakers, Stew does not look like anybody else on a New York stage at the moment. He does not much resemble a scraggly-sexy emo pinup either. This is entirely fitting, since his is the story of a young man achingly out of place in the world, trying on poses and assuming new guises in his quest for an identity that, as he will ultimately learn, many artists can only find in their art.

This is not, to be sure, a story heretofore untold. Many a memoir has charted the same emotional territory, of youthful angst, family rebellion and spiritual awakening through sex, drugs and self-obsession. Oops, I mean self-expression.

But as an African-American who grew up comfortably in Los Angeles, where he defiantly cleaved to Zen Buddhism and punk rock, thumbing his nose at church and Mom and the prospect of middle-class achievement, Stew brings an invigorating new perspective to the classic coming-of-age narrative.

He brings a gently satiric touch too. As Stew narrates the semi-fictionalized story of his search for personal and aesthetic fulfillment, which took him from the not-mean streets of Los Angeles to the hash cafes of Amsterdam and the Berlin bars where bitter artists plot assaults on mainstream culture, he provides comic footnotes and musical annotation as his memories leap to life before him. Now and then he slides those funky yellow-tinted eyeglasses up his forehead, and interjects a wry observation as he looks on with a mixture of affection and consternation at the callow youth he once was.

This jumpy character — in the text he is simply called Youth — is portrayed by the sensational Daniel Breaker, whose performance has grown tremendously since the Off Broadway run. Brimming with the nervy energy of an ego itching to write its name on the world, Mr. Breaker scampers around the stage with antic enthusiasm, eyes glowing with righteous self-importance or popping with comic mortification. It is as if the older Stew, restrained and reflective, is trying to keep in check a cartoon version of himself that keeps straying from his grasp and getting into trouble.

The men and women who help shape our hero’s destiny are portrayed by a small ensemble of actors whose performances have also been subtly scaled up to suit the Broadway stage. Colman Domingo is priceless in two roles. As the jaded leader of a church choir in Act I he initiates the young Stew into the rites of pot smoking and imperiously bestows on him the privilege of being a stranger in his own skin. (“Black folks passing for black folks,” his acolyte marvels. “That’s a trip!”) In the second act he enlivens a potentially clichéd spoof of performance art with snarling ferociousness.

Chad Goodridge and Rebecca Naomi Jones are equally fine as Stew’s clueless fellow punk-band members, and, later, as his finicky mentors in Euro-bohemianism, for whom the young Stew, in one of the show’s brightest sequences, ineptly poses as the Oppressed American Black Man he never was. (Mr. Breaker’s limber dash through 25 years of “Soul Train” dance moves is priceless.)

The radiant De’Adre Aziza is delightful as a self-possessed teenage beauty queen urging the nerdy young Stew to “blacken up a bit.” And Eisa Davis portrays with warmth and grace the mother Stew leaves behind, to discover only too late how grievously final the parting would be.

The show’s structure is loose, its mood informal, as song moves fluidly into story on a bare stage lighted by Kevin Adams with his customary subtle insight. (Mr. Adams and the set designer David Korins collaborated on the spectacular wall of neon advertising the dazzling allurements of Europe.) Some episodes are more engaging than others — the romances feel a bit pro forma to me — but the musical is bound together by the eloquence and power of the songs, played by the skilled onstage band. (That’s Ms. Rodewald on bass and backing vocals).

Directed with finesse by Annie Dorsen (who created the show in collaboration with Stew and Ms. Rodewald), “Passing Strange” struts with a new vitality uptown. A bit shorter, a lot sharper, and infused with the sense of occasion that the old mystique of Broadway — bless its mercantile heart — can still bring to a theatrical event, it also moved me as it had not downtown in its consideration of the hard bargains that must be struck with life in order to pursue a career in art.

If that sounds familiar, perhaps it is because the opening of “Passing Strange” comes just a week after that of another Broadway musical about an artist struggling to reconcile the demands of his vocation with his duty to love. I suspect the Georges Seurat brought to life again in the splendid new revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Sunday in the Park With George” would find much in common with the sardonic songwriter whose presence on a Broadway stage is every bit as unlikely. As the painter sees life through the distancing prisms of color and light, Stew looks at the people in his world and sees songs to be written.

The Seurat of “Sunday” would surely understand Stew’s reflections on the trouble this makes for the creatively obsessed. “People like me — we feel like art is more real than life,” he says toward the end of the show. The Sondheim Seurat would sympathize too with Stew’s response to an unfathomable loss. He just picks up his guitar and gets ready to rock onward, trying to “fill the void with song.”

PASSING STRANGE

Book and lyrics by Stew; music by Stew and Heidi Rodewald; directed by and created in collaboration with Annie Dorsen; choreography by Karole Armitage; sets by David Korins; costumes by Elizabeth Hope Clancy; lighting by Kevin Adams; sound by Tom Morse; music supervision and orchestrations by Stew and Ms. Rodewald; music coordinator, Seymour Red Press; production stage manager, Tripp Phillips; company manager, Kim Sellon; associate producer, S. D. Wagner. Presented by the Shubert Organization, Elizabeth Ireland McCann, Bill Kenwright, Chase Mishkin, Barbara and Buddy Freitag, Broadway Across America, Emily Fisher Landau, Peter May, Boyett Ostar, Elie Hirschfeld/Jed Bernstein, Wendy Federman/Jackie Florin, Spring Sirkin/Ruth Hendel, Vasi Laurence/Pat Flicker Addiss and Joey Parnes, in association with the Public Theater and the Berkeley Repertory Theater. At the Belasco Theater, 111 West 44th Street, Manhattan; (212) 239-6200. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes.

WITH: Stew (Narrator), Daniel Breaker (Youth), De’Adre Aziza (Edwina/Marianna/Sudabey), Eisa Davis (Mother), Colman Domingo (Franklin/Joop/ Mr. Venus), Chad Goodridge (Terry/Christophe/Hugo) and Rebecca Naomi Jones (Sherry/Renata/Desi).