European misadventures rock his world

With its playful humor and the general ebullience of its sizzling ensemble, the New Repertory Theatre production of “Passing Strange’’ grabbed me.

Does this chronicle of a young African-American man’s search for his true identity tend to italicize its message about the transformative power of culture with heavy-handed, all-right-we-get-it-already lines like “Life is a mistake that only art can correct’’? Yes.

Does it introduce a contrived plot twist late in Act II transparently designed to make the audience reach for its hankies? Yes. Does it fail to break much new ground as it ventures into the much-traveled precincts of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll? Yes.

Did any of this detract one iota from my enjoyment of “Passing Strange’’? No, no, and no. In this New England premiere of the Tony-winning musical, director Kate Warner proves equally adept at speeding up the velocity of “Passing Strange’’ and slowing it down, capturing the show’s rollicking and reflective qualities.

At least since Mark Twain’s “The Innocents Abroad,’’ we Americans have launched ourselves into European misadventures, anxiously or sardonically measuring ourselves against our sophisticated older cousins.

Stew, the single-named songwriter-playwright who wrote the book and lyrics for “Passing Strange’’ (while collaborating on the music with Heidi Rodewald), updates that dynamic to the mid-1970s and gives it a satiric twist.

At the center of “Passing Strange’’ is a young aspiring rock musician, simply called Youth, played by Cheo Bourne with a wide-eyed air of discovery.

He lives in South Central Los Angeles, where he chafes against the middle-class expectations of his churchgoing mother, portrayed with an affectingly sorrowful undertow by Cheryl D. Singleton. When she asks him, “Don’t you know the difference between sacred and profane?,’’ he replies: “I can’t HEAR the difference.’’ The young man is so defined by his love for rock that even when he experiences a moment of religious ecstasy, he channels Jimi Hendrix to express it, exclaiming: “S’cuse me while I kiss the sky!’’

Throughout “Passing Strange,’’ his middle-aged self, called Narrator (Cliff Odle, gruffly authoritative), weighs in with commentary, sometimes spoken, sometimes sung, as in the form of songs like “Must’ve Been High’’ and “Arlington Hill.’’ A bass guitar slung around his neck, Odle serves as part of a five-piece band arrayed on Eric Levenson’s three-platform set.

By the show’s second song — a rousingly flamboyant number titled “Baptist Fashion Show’’ — it is clear that the New Rep ensemble will be a big asset to “Passing Strange.’’ (Each of them also plays several other roles.)

Kami Rushell Smith (Speakeasy Stage Company’s “Nine,’’ Underground Railway Theater’s “Harriet Jacobs’’) is a particular standout, radiating energy every moment she is onstage. But Maurice E. Parent (who played Coalhouse Walker Jr. in New Rep’s “Ragtime’’ a few seasons back), Eve Kagan, and De’Lon Grant (flashing the comic talents he showed in Lyric Stage Company’s “25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’’) also throw themselves with great gusto into “Passing Strange.’’

When Youth heads off to Amsterdam, he immediately falls in with a group of café habitués whose free-spirited approach to life is exactly what he’s been looking for (“He measured time passing in hits from the bong,’’ the Narrator observes), then has a brief fling — a set of experiences captured in the larky “Amsterdam’’ and the poignant “Keys.’’

Eventually, though, he grows restless again, declaring: “Paradise is a bore.’’ So he heads to Berlin, where the gloomy mood of the Cold War is reflected among the pretentious, self-important artistes he takes up with. (They are given to growling such non-negotiable pronouncements as “True love can only exist after the revolution.’’) Youth exaggerates to them the impoverishment of his upbringing back in LA, paving the way for “The Black One,’’ in which he proclaims himself a “ghetto warrior’’ and a German woman cries: “I want to be re-incarcerated as a black man!’’

But amid Youth’s posturing and experimenting, the voice of his mother, his conscience, won’t be silenced. By the end of “Passing Strange,’’ he seems to have figured out the value of the world he has left behind as well as the worlds he still has left to discover.

Don Aucoin can be reached at aucoin@globe.com.