by Christopher Arnott
New Haven Advocate
February 9, 2000

New York rents are sky-high, and the East Village milieu that informs its denizens' moralities and individualities can't be approximated in any other American community. What's it like taking the late Jonathan Larson's rousing rock musical--inspired by Puccini's La Boheme and the novels of Sara Schulman, but especially by the struggling-artist quandaries Larson himself experienced as a young Off Broadway composer/playwright in the early '90s--to less distinctive cities and less intimate theaters?

I spoke to Boko Suzuki, the music director and on-stage bandleader for Rent's national touring company.

"Every theater's different, but the show's the same," he says, though he might not have the best vantage point, since his back's to the cast throughout the show. Like the still-running New York production, the touring Rent draws much of its cast and musicians from rock bands rather than the usual musical theater channels. Suzuki's own background includes both classical and rock affiliations, so he's more cognizant than some of his colleagues of Larson's debt to La Boheme. "There are obvious parallels, even some references in the show"--the song "La Vie Boheme," for instance. "But it's not a conscious choice to imitate opera." And Puccini's 1896 work doesn't bother to count how many seconds there are in a year, as Rent's signature ensemble number "Seasons of Love" does at the beginning of Act Two.

Suzuki's been with various productions of Rent for two years. Previously, there were two concurrent tours (one of which played the Bushnell in Hartford last year), standing companies in Los Angeles, Boston and other cities, plus a bunch of productions and tours in other countries. The company coming to Oakdale is now the only Rent tour in North America.

As with a lot of shows that send out tours while the original Broadway production's still running, the touring company of Rent is something of a farm team from which the performers can jump to New York. Cast changeovers are fairly frequent, and it's Suzuki's job to break in the new players in a condensed rehearsal period of two to three weeks. He's fortunate that his band lineup has been virtually unchanged for two years.

"What first attracted me to the show was that it was fresh, new Broadway fare. At the time it came along, Broadway shows were big and lavish. This one is pure storytelling and deals with real life issues--living with HIV, same-sex relationships." While the homosexual angles have raised some hackles in some communities, audiences have been uniformly receptive to the show's Gen X sensibility.

As for the score, the live band is the same size as in the New York production, and while "the show has evolved," according to Suzuki, any changes are minor. "It's not my agenda to make changes. We've all tried to be faithful to Jonathan Larson's vision."

Though it chronicles the lives and loves of down-and-outers, Rent is nonetheless a slick and direct bit of rock-tinged entertainment. I saw the Boston company a few years ago and was taken aback by the brashness of much of the staging--"Seasons of Love" has the whole cast standing along the front of the stage, an all-too-obvious way of announcing, "this number is particularly special." But for Big Apple verisimilitude, Rent beats the hell out of other youth-laden shows of recent years, such as Footloose (which played the Shubert a few months ago), Fame (which the Oakdale had last year) and Saturday Night Fever. It's contrived and commercial, and as a pop theater work can't hold a candle to Hedwig & the Angry Inch or even West Side Story. But it's hit a nerve that's still exposed, and obsessed Rent heads still flock to see it for the umpteenth time. A lot of people live in Connecticut to escape having to live in New York, but they can't escape the fact that Rent is due.