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by William Glackin |
A theatrical explosion called "Rent" was set off in the Community Center Theater on Tuesday night on the Broadway Series. After 2 1/2 hours the walls were still standing, but so was the near-capacity audience, cheering for the kind of all-out performance that made it clear why the late Jonathan Larson's inspired musical won all those Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize. It's tough, it's funny, it makes you believe, it makes you care. Its story, however, is not easy to tell. It will help if you allow time to look at the program, which has a two-page "note about the plot." Alongside are pictures of eight of the young people who are pursuing their hopes, their dreams and each other in and around a loft in New York's Lower East Side during a year that stretches from one Christmas Eve to the next. At the center of all this swirling love and uncertainty and, yes, danger (from AIDS, from drugs) are Mark (Matt Caplan), who films the others nonstop, and Roger (Cary Shields), who plays guitar and wants to write one great song. Maureen (Michelle Joan Smith), an irrepressible performance artist, has left Mark for Joanne (Jacqueline B. Arnold), a formidable lesbian and Harvard Law School grad who is helping Maureen plan a protest against eviction of the homeless from a vacant lot next to the building. This eviction is threatened by Benny (Brian M. Love), who used to room with Mark and Roger but married a rich woman and intends to put up a building on the lot. Benny is also pursuing Mimi (Saycon Sengbloh), an exotic dancer who lives in the space below. Mimi and Roger, however, fall in love when the lights go out and she knocks on the door, looking for her stash with a lighted candle. Finally, bringing welcome humor and reason to all this angst is another ex-roommate, Tom Collins (Horace V. Rogers), who got mugged but is comforted by Angel Shunard (Shaun Earl), a colorful transvestite and peacemaker whom everybody loves. It is widely known that Larson, who wrote the music, lyrics and book for "Rent," and who died tragically and unexpectedly at age 35 the night before it opened off-Broadway, was inspired by the example of Puccini's "La Boheme." The many fans of that opera will have recognized some details in the preceding paragraph, and might have fun from some of the other references that Larson sprinkled through the show. But they are the least important aspects of "Rent's" impact. This is indeed a rock opera -- almost all of it is sung, the main exceptions being Mark's narration -- but it's more reminiscent of "Hair" in its depiction of young people trying to cope in a society governed by older people's rules. Still, remembering "Hair" doesn't get you to the heart of "Rent." It's true that toward the end, Mark and Roger drive home a bitter song that says if you're living in America at the end of the millennium, "you're what you own." They sing together: "We're dying in America/To come into our own. And when you're dying in America/At the end of the millennium/You're not alone." But like Stephen Sondheim's baker in "Into the Woods," they take heart: "I am not alone. I am not alone."
This remarkable show is full of understanding, full of heart, full of the belief that maybe with a little luck and love, you can have something, do something, find somebody. All this striving to find a little happiness against the odds takes place in an arena worthy of it: a big stage crammed to the bare walls with all sorts of levels and centers of activity, including a moon upon which faces eventually appear, a metallic structure that turns into a lighted Christmas tree, a phone booth without walls and a superb six-piece band led by keyboardist Boko Suzuki. Director Michael Greif, with an infallible sense of pace, keeps the big cast going with a wonderful sense of excitement, derived partly from the tension and conflicts in their relationships and partly from just plain speed. But his pace also includes sudden slowdowns for valuable quiet moments of feeling, most of them conveyed through song. There are funny pauses for calls from mothers. At one point, recriminations flame up at every hand. "How could you . . . ?" is the refrain. These lives are turbulent and full of yearning. Marlies Yearby has designed some neatly insidious dance touches behind the action as well as in it, and there is a glorious tango for Maureen, with Mark and Joanne participating. Many of the songs are beautiful; all of them serve the story. Be warned: This is often a very loud show. The voices, firmly in that style, are mostly very good; the singing is excellent. The cast performs to the hilt; everybody worked to make each character count. Sengbloh's Mimi was outstanding in both her passion and her despair at Roger's reluctance to accept her fully (he mourns a girlfriend who committed suicide when she discovered she had AIDS). AIDS is a shadow in the play, but the wit and flair and sweetness of Angel keeps it at bay -- for all but himself. Shaun Earl's performance made him clearly one of the crowd's favorites. How can they go on in a life so full of frustrations and disappointments? "I trust my soul," the women sing. "My only goal/Is just to be." They sing: "There's only now, there's only here. No day but today." It's a tough kind of affirmation, but this show makes it inspiring. It's a kind of happy ending, at last, for "La Boheme."
Broadway's Hit Rock Musicals: In "Rent," the biggest hit musical of the past decade, playwright-composer Jonathan Larson hoped to create a "Hair" for the 1990s, thus luring the elusive MTV crowd into theaters. The score runs the gamut from R&B and rock to jazz and blues. The costumes ushered in '90s retro chic -- from tattoos and piercings to clunky shoes and leather jackets straight from "Shaft" -- onto the Broadway stage. Here's a cheat sheet on other musicals that have rocked the Great White Way, replacing show tunes and shuffles with the trademarks of the rock concert, from guitar licks to screeching vocals.
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