by Colin Maclean
Edmonton Sun
November 8, 2000

Rent rocked into Edmonton last night trailing a Pulitzer Prize and a clutch of Tonys.

This hip, often raw, contemporary retelling of Puccini's 1896 opera, stark as a Big Apple back alley and as fresh as a breeze across the East River, proved to be most everything its pre-publicity promised. The complex plot may be a bit messy, especially in Act 1, but Jonathan Larson's unsentimental words and music are performed with heart and vitality by an energetic young cast. Much like the Hair of 20 years ago, its something of a tribal musical in which a group of misfits find community in shared pain and paranoia.

Puccini's starving Paris Bohemians are now a group of disaffected New York artists. The rent is high but not as high as these kids. We meet lesbians, drag queens and HIV infected lovers - both straight and gay. The main plot drifts, often rather aimlessly, over a one-year period and involves efforts to evict a group of homeless, sexually and racially diverse kids from their grungy attic/loft. (Paul Clay's metalltic jumble looks like a cross between a crash scene and a Calder mobile. Effectively grungy).

As in the Puccini original, the central love story is between Roger (Edmonton's Christian Mena) and Mimi (Saycon Sengbloh), and the fierce bond that develops between the other characters. Mark (Matt Caplan) is a filmmaker (and sometime narrator), Tom Collins (Mark Richard Love) a sympathetic electronic whiz, Angel (Shaun Earl) a lovable transvestite and Maureen (Maggie Benjamin) a performance artist. Benjamin delivers a whopper of a show-stopper in her Over the Moon.

Mena is a powerhouse. He plays Roger with a brooding sense of inevitable loss. After his girlfriend's suicide, he has retreated to his attic where he labours to write one great song before "the virus takes hold." He sings the first great solo of the show, One Song Glory. Roger meets the wistful Mimi, when she comes knocking on his door looking for a light for her candle. Mimi is a sexy S&M dancer, and is also HIV positive and addicted, but is filled with a life force so powerful she, instead, lights Roger's candle and drags him out of his lethargy.

The parallel love story of Angel and Tom ends in tragedy and brings on one of the most moving moments of the show and a blistering, wrenching solo, I'll Cover You from Collins.

You'll probably need the plot scenario in the program to figure out who is doing what to whom.

The story ends on Christmas Eve. Some have found the will to move on, some have died and others have fallen back into their relentless self-destructive lives. Act 2 - tight, focused and emotion-filled - more than makes up for the confusion of the first.

Larson's score grows directly out of big emotions. It's a gloriously inspired fusion of pop, rock, blues, gospel, calypso, tango and Sondheim. Sometimes driving - sometimes melancholy, sober and elegant.

This is one rent worth collecting.