by Rick Pender
3/26/98

It's time to pay Rent at the Aronoff Center. The blockbuster musical that knocked Broadway upside the head two years ago has arrived in Cincinnati for a two-week run. It's a tumultuous, bittersweet, energetic joy ride of a show, one that justifies all the hype.

Creator Jonathan Larson -- whose death at age 35, just before Rent opened off-Broadway, kicked the publicity machine into overdrive -- updated Puccini's 19th-century opera, La Boheme. Instead of starving artists struggling to get by on the Left Bank in Paris, we're now in the late 20th century in New York City's East Village. Tragic love, illness and tormented friendships are intact, wrapped in a new musical package (with an occasional riff recalling Puccini).

The translation works beautifully, although Larson framed it within an egalitarian showmanship that's both the show's hallmark and its appeal. This is not a star vehicle. It's a story of a desperate community of characters, trapped by alienation, disease and loneliness. Yet they survive with a life-affirming conviction to grasp the vitality of the moment: "No other road. No other way. No day but today." Rent is a new kind of musical that holds great promise for the future of the theater, a show that speaks to contemporary audiences.

Although Larson often characterized his work as a "Rock opera for the '90s," the work encompasses a broad array of musical styles, from the lilting "Light My Candle" and the humorous "Tango Maureen" to the frenetic "La Vie Boheme," which closes the first act, from the R&B-styled "Seasons of Love" opening Act 2 to the love ballad "Your Eyes" which precedes the finale. Rent's music is melodic and memorable. It's been pointed out that the show works because its music is full of unabashed emotion and sentiment.

Rent is also full of talent, a touring cast of 17 who pour emotion and sensitivity into each musical number. Kirk McDonald plays Mark, the story's narrator, a film geek who records his friends activities. His roommate Roger, an HIV-infected punker, is played with ennui and anger by Owen Johnston II. Julia Santana takes on the dramatic and emotional role of the drug-addicted Mimi. Mark Leroy Jackson and Andy Senor play Tom Collins, a paranoid cyber-freak, and his drag-queen lover Angel.

Rent truly captures a contemporary sense of alienation and impermanence without leaving the audience feeling down. In fact, the final feeling is affirmation, existence within a community of love, tempered by a sobering reality. It's not the sweetness and optimism that has characterized many American musicals. That might be what's so exciting about this show.