Results tagged “passingstrange”

              

Click on the film stills above for more on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which also include Passing Strange, The Baader Meinhof Complex, Five Minutes of Heaven, World's Greatest Dad, Shorts, Confessions of a Ex-Doofus-Itchy Footed Mutha, Fifty Dead Men Walking, X Games 3D: The Movie, My One and Only, Post Grad, Art & Copy, Spaceballs, and Fargo.

There was a futile rush-ticket line stretching halfway down the block outside the Director's Guild Theatre on 57th Street last night for the New York premiere of Spike Lee's Passing Strange, which documents the critically acclaimed rock musical using a concert-doc aesthetic not unlike Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense. Tickets to the extremely sold-out Tribeca Film Festival screening were exclusively offered to American Express Cardmembers, but Passing Strange fans shut out last night will at least be able to see it on TV; in a post-show discussion last night, Lee revealed that the film will be broadcast on PBS's Great Performances series, and he added that a theatrical distribution may be in the works. (There is also a second and final screening tonight as part of TFF.)

          

Read our Passing Strange review, our interview with Stew, and click on the other images for the Gothamist top ten of '08.

The Tony, OBIE and Drama Desk-award winning rock musical Passing Strange will close June 20th after a six month run on Broadway, during which time the show failed to translate massive critical acclaim into box office profits. Attendance hovered around 50% capacity for most of the run, and producers’ hopes for a post-Tonys boost were dashed when Latino musical In the Heights dominated the awards.

We ran into Passing Strange co-creator Heidi Rodewald at Two Boots in the West Village over the weekend, and she confirmed news that Spike Lee will be directing a film version of the critically acclaimed but box office-challenged rock musical. Lee will film the show three times this month for cable TV; twice with audiences and once without. At Two Boots, Rodewald summed up Passing Strange’s difficulty selling tickets on Broadway by paraphrasing an old producers’ maxim: “We made the mistake of making art.”

The 62nd Annual Tony Awards were presented last night at Radio City Musical Hall; the biggest winners were a musical first staged in 1949 and a Pulitzer Prize winning pot boiler from Chicago. The acclaimed Lincoln Center revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific won the most awards, besting Sunday in the Park with George and Gypsy for best revival of a musical and nabbing six other Tonys. And the overrated Hollywood-bound melodrama August: Osage County won five awards, including best play, surprising no one.

           

After last year’s stuffy exile at NYU’s Skirball Center, the Village Voice Obie Awards were back at the raucous, open-bar Webster Hall – or rather the Ritz, as Stew, co-creator of the phenomenal Broadway rock musical Passing Strange recalled. For over fifty years, the Obies have honored the best of Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway theater; coming on the heels of last week's Tony nominee announcement, the awards serve as a pointed reminder that the most exciting theater usually happens far away from the big stages in Times Square.

The 2008 Tony Award nominees were just announced, and looking over the list we’ve got to admit that it was a pretty good year for Broadway, at least in terms of quality. The phenomenal rock musical Passing Strange picked up seven nominations, including Best Musical, Best Original Score, and Best Lead Actor (Stew, pictured). Also competing in the Best Musical category are the tepidly received Cry-Baby, the harmless Xanadu, and the underdog Latino musical In the Heights.

THEATER: Broadway’s best show, the critically acclaimed Passing Strange, is still open for business, though struggling to compete against the usual insipid pabulum like Legally Blonde. Producers of this phenomenal rock musical were dealt another blow this week when CBS refused to broadcast their performance in the Tony Awards preview show. (The number, “We Just Had Sex,” is a cheeky, PG-13 homage to free love.) So if you haven’t seen Passing Strange yet, for crying out loud, do yourself a favor and catch it before it’s too late. You won’t have a problem getting $25 rush tickets before the show – we’ve seen it twice and would gladly pay double that amount. – John Del Signore

If you haven’t yet seen the phenomenal new Broadway show Passing Strange, you’re really missing out. There are plenty reasons why you don’t dare pass on this electrifying, decidedly un-Broadway triumph, but it’s Stew, the single-named writer, co-composer and onstage narrator of Passing Strange, who’s best equipped to sell you on it: “You wanna know the most terrifying combination of words in the English language to me? Rock Musical. Because the music featured in such so-called productions is stuff that no self-respecting rock fan would ever be caught dead listening to. Therefore, Passing Strange is the musical you can take your friend to who hates musicals.”

I hate going to Broadway shows: fighting through the mobs in Times Square, being herded into the theater like livestock, cramming into a tiny seat while feedback from hearing aids and hacking coughs reverberate on all sides. Admittedly, I’m a world-class grouch when it comes to these things, so it’s no faint praise that I’d eagerly subject myself to it again for Passing Strange, the multidisciplinary rock musical that just blazed onto Broadway. It’s a phenomenal experience that deserves a run ten times longer than Cats and Phantom combined.