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| by Marion Garmel Star News March 19, 1999
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Five million twenty five thousand
six hundred minutes ... So goes the signature song of the late Jonathan Larson's musical, Rent, paying its first visit to Indianapolis Tuesday through next Sunday on the Broadway Classics Series at Clowes Hall. The song bookends the musical, full of heart and high energy, that follows a year in the life of a group of friends who live in New York's East Village in the 1990s. It's a modern-day spin on La Boheme, Giacomo Puccini's 1896 opera about poets and artists living in Paris in the 1830s. Rent opened off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop on Feb. 13, 1996, and moved to Broadway that April, sweeping the major Tony Awards as well as the Pulitzer Prize for drama. It has sold out almost everywhere it has played, with two national companies on the road. What makes it so important? "Because it's unlike any other musical that's been out there recently," says Christina Fadale, who plays Maureen, the performance artist, in the show. It's not only a show about young people, she said by phone from Dayton on a previous tour stop. It's a show about young people with a young cast. "The musical is really contemporary and it deals with issues most of your typical musicals wouldn't dare deal with. Disease. Sexuality. But they are not the main focus of the show," she said. As important as those issues are, "and people need to open their hearts to those issues," the heart of the musical is love. "It takes you on an incredible emotional journey, with moments of intense happiness and intense sadness," she said The success of Rent is always tempered by the death of Larson on the morning after the final dress rehearsal for the off-Broadway production. He died unexpectedly of an aortic aneurysm just 10 days short of his 36th birthday. That adds poignancy to the story of Roger, the doomed songwriter who dreams of going out in a blaze of glory, "One song to redeem this empty life," he sings. Roger is played by Christian Mena in a 15-member cast that includes eight principal characters. But it's very much an ensemble show, said Fadale. "Everybody up there is important to the integrity of the show. Without the ensemble members, the show would not work." Fadale has been with this company three months as a transfer from the first national company, which is playing indefinitely in San Francisco. She likes playing the shorter runs, she said. "It's important that Jonathan Larson's message gets shared, not just with big cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, but that it gets spread all over the United States." The show has met with success in unexpected places, including Salt Lake City, where other shows have been picketed, and in some older communities in Florida. "It's nice to go to small towns. You never know what to expect. We usually get a great response from the crowd, and when you don't expect it, that's much more rewarding," she said. "There are people who get up and walk out. If it's not for their palette, that's fine. But it makes me sad. There are so many wonderful messages the show gives. I wish people would be able to overlook those things." The musical moves from one Christmas to another in the lives of eight young people who struggle to pay the rent, make their mark and find love in a lonely place. The action takes place in Roger and Mark's apartment in an East Village tenement, in The Life Cafe, a restaurant in New York's increasingly gentrified East Village, and on the street. How do you document real life when real life is getting more like fiction every day? ... Headlines, breadlines blow my mind, and now this deadline, eviction or pay ... Rent. Though the show is
almost sold out, a limited number of seats in the front two rows of the orchestra will be
made available for $20 at each performance. The tickets go on sale at the Clowes Hall box
office two hours before each show, for cash only, and will be limited to two per customer.
No lines allowed before 8 a.m. |
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