by Christine Dolen
Miami Herald
April 23, 1998

There's a glorious affirmation going on at the Jackie Gleason Theater for the next two weeks. It is an affirmation of life and of lifestyles, of hope in the face of death, of the way theater can sing with the sting of rock so that your eyes mist and your soul tingles.

It is, of course, Jonathan Larson's Rent.

This 1996 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical has been celebrated as a leap into theater's future, and while traditionalists might beg to differ, the young men and women who roared their approval at the Gleason opening Tuesday were visibly, audibly touched by Larson's hot reworking of Giacomo Puccini's La Boheme.

Set in New York's East Village, Rent tells the story of an extended family of mostly impoverished artists. They are straight and gay, and many are HIV positive, drug-addicted or both. Larson, as both composer and lyricist, transformed Puccini's century-old Paris into a sexy, powerful, nonjudgmental, compassionate world at the edge of the millennium.

What you will see at the Gleason is just what you'd see at Broadway's Nederlander Theater, where Rent hasn't played to an empty seat in its two-year run. Set designer Paul Clay frames the stage with broken crockery, then strategically places platforms and tables in a space that looks stuck somewhere between rehearsal and performance. Blake Burba's lights blaze and flicker, and a giant paper lantern stands in for the moon. Angela Wendt's costumes look like Village street wear, both worn and of the moment.

The cast, in almost every case, is as stirring as the original, and a few of the performers are an improvement.

Cary Shields is haunted, gruff and stirring as Roger, an ex-addict whose girlfriend committed suicide after informing him they both had AIDS. Julia Santana is a torrid, sweet-voiced Mimi, a knowing yet innocent 19-year-old who finds a reason to live in Roger -- and who gives him one in return.

Leigh Hetherington is the maddening yet irresistible Maureen, former girlfriend of Roger's filmmaker roommate Mark (the appealing Kirk McDonald) and current lover of an oft-frustrated attorney, Joanne (Monique Daniels, wonderfully compelling in the role). Mark Leroy Jackson as philosophy professor Tom Collins and Andy Seņor as drag queen Angel have a beautiful chemistry.

Even D'Monroe as Benjamin Coffin III, the entrepreneurial landlord who would cheerfully dispossess his former best buddies, is so alluring onstage that you just can't muster a hiss for the "villain.''

Larson's music, delivered with punch and clarity by the onstage rock band, ranges from ballads to laments to gospel to, believe it or not, a tango. Thanks to enormous sales of the Broadway cast CD, many in the audience already seem to know and embrace many of the songs -- I'll Cover You, Seasons of Love, Without You and more.

There is sadness in Rent, and greater sadness in knowing that its 35-year-old creator died suddenly the night before the first New York audience would affirm his achievement. This show, so full of love, is his legacy.