The rock musical “Passing Strange” has officially opened its major Los Angeles-area engagement at the Pasadena Playhouse, marking a professional homecoming for a work deeply rooted in the local music scene. The production began on November 4 and is scheduled to continue through November 29, 2026.
Directed by Zhailon Levingston—a 2026 Tony Award winner—this staging arrives nearly two decades after the show’s celebrated Broadway run. The production features an entirely new cast led by Ty Taylor, the frontman of the band Vintage Trouble, who takes on the role of the Narrator. He is joined by Britton Smith as Youth and Tony nominee Saycon Sengbloh as Mother.
The musical, created by Stew and Heidi Rodewald, traces its origins back to a 2006 premiere at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre before moving to a critically acclaimed Off-Broadway run in 2007. It officially premiered on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre on February 8, 2008, where it earned seven Tony nominations and won the award for Best Book of a Musical. Despite its critical success and the creators’ history in the Los Angeles band scene with their group The Negro Problem, “Passing Strange” has not seen a major professional staging in the city until this 20th-anniversary season.
For Stew and Rodewald, the Pasadena run represents a symbolic “passing of the torch.” Stew, who currently serves as a Professor of the Practice of Musical Theater at Harvard, has moved into a consultant role for this production rather than performing the Narrator role he originated. Stew and Rodewald reportedly granted Levingston creative freedom to interpret the show without their direct artistic intervention, allowing a new generation of artists to define the work’s current relevance.
The narrative, which follows a young Black musician’s journey from middle-class Los Angeles to the bohemian circles of Amsterdam and Berlin in search of “the real,” serves as a full-circle moment for the creators who lived and played in the same L.A. neighborhoods depicted in the show’s opening act.
While “Passing Strange” is often cited as an influence on modern musical theater, its return to Southern California places the work back in the geographic setting that inspired its semi-autobiographical themes. The production at Pasadena Playhouse effectively ends a 20-year wait for a professional staging in the city where the story begins.