by Michael H. Margolin
Detroit News
Novembr 28, 2000

Rent, returning to Detroit, this time at the Detroit Opera House, confirms what a first and second viewing had shown: It is a powerful, deeply affecting musical.

Rent offers up a time capsule of life in New York during the 1980s and '90s. Based creatively on La Boheme, Puccini's opera, with a libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, composer-lyricist-book writer Jonathan Larson found an anthem to Bohemian life that was 100 years old -- and still fresh.

Larson's Bohemians are star-crossed lovers, drug users, transvestites. They live in fashionable squalor and fall in and out of bed, love, addiction and, in one case, the land from which there is no return -- death.

Mark used to date Maureen, who is now in a relationship with Joanne; Mimi used to see Benny, but now she is in love with Mark's roommate, Roger, whose friend Collins is in a relationship with Angel, a drag queen. And so it goes.

The musical begins on a Christmas Eve, there is a New Year's Eve social action protesting squatters' rights, and time travels through a year to the next Christmas Eve.

Larson takes salient parts of La Boheme to root his plot. But he also invents enough so that it is not simple recycling. A several note sequence of Puccini's becomes a leitmotif in the score, and the show is through-composed, almost completely sung.

The score: One of the richest written for any Broadway musical, it is full of rhythm, gorgeous melodies and lyrics that describe feelings and tell vivid stories.

In each production, there are standouts. The show, now at the Opera House, has members easing into roles they performed in Australia, on Broadway or on the previous tour, some for the first time.

Maggie Benjamin performed Maureen on Broadway. Whenever she is on, the show's bright lights burn more intensely. Her duet, "Take Me or Leave Me," with Joanne (Jacqueline B. Arnold) is breathtaking. Mark Richard Ford is Collins and his voice is, perhaps, the most sumptuous in the cast. He makes "Santa Fe" into a moment of vocal greatness.

Christian Mena gets at the core of Roger's angst; Matt Caplan captures Mark's hyper-style; Shaun Earl is a beguiling Angel, as Saycon Sengbloh is a sensual Mimi; Brian M. Love plays the duplicitous Benny with shielded claws; and Arnold is a fiery Joanne.

Musically, this is an exceptional production. Voices blend and meld, weaving around Larson's rock-based score. The one caveat is that more often than not, lyrics are not clearly articulated. First-timers need to read the plot summary and go with the flow; at best, they should listen to the cast album before seeing the show.

Costumes, choreography and set are essentially intact from the Broadway production, as is Michael Greif's adroit direction.

The small band -- which makes a big sound -- is led by conductor/keyboardist Shelley Hanson and the group gives a well-wrought reading of the score.

As has become customary, the first five rows -- here chairs over the closed orchestra pit -- are set aside for same day purchase for $20. This is geared to younger fans. Still, the screams and raised voices throughout the theatre at key points -- Mimi's entrance for example -- bear out the statistic that the majority of the audience for this show is under 35 years old.

 They are such dedicated fans that Rent probably could become Lease and play on and on in Detroit.