by Michael Grossman
The Columbus Dispatch
July 2, 1998

Forget the hype and focus on the hope: Rent has arrived in Columbus in all its raw, shaggy glory.

Exploding with passion, tenderness, observant humor, tragedy, jaunty profanity and a high-decibel score that drowns out some of the best Broadway lyrics written in the past decade, Rent isn't for everyone. Only hip musical-theater fans, open-minded opera buffs and rock-concert regulars young enough -- in age or spirit -- will appreciate the rough genius and precocious wisdom that has made this show a 1990s landmark.

Like Puccini's La Boheme a century ago, Rent wears its heart on its grungy bohemian sleeves and affirms the saving grace of love, community, artistry and diversity in a world of poverty and terminal disease. The seven leading characters may be black, white and Latino, gay, lesbian and heterosexual, healthy and sick, but they form a family, whether fighting a sudden demand for rent from D'Monroe's ambitious Benjamin Coffin III or joined in grief-stricken remembrance.

At its joyous best, Rent celebrates the uninhibited exhilaration of "living in America at the end of the millennium" and of "making something out of nothing, of going against the grain, going insane. . . ." Few Broadway musicals have reached so successfully for new, young-adult audiences, yet the touring version risks alienating older audiences whenever the 17-member cast gathers onstage to sing loudly but incomprehensibly. Nor are the score and story always served well by director Michael Greif's rock-concert staging on the industrial-metal set, although the dramatic chiaroscuro lighting helps. As they reportedly did elsewhere, the acoustics should improve as the touring company becomes more familiar with the Palace Theatre.

Jasmine Baird, the understudy who played Mimi Tuesday, glows with kittenish charm. From her first, halting duet with Adrian Lewis Morgan's deeply attracted but divided Roger to her MTV-style Out Tonight and wistful Without You, Baird projects a saucy sensuality and touching vulnerability.

All the actresses make this touring company memorable, from Leigh Hetherington's self-centered Maureen (hilariously bad in her attempt at performance art) to Monique Daniels' easily flustered Joanne.

As cross-dressing Angel, Andy Senor blends compassion and an amusingly feisty femininity. As Tom Collins, Angel's newfound boyfriend, Mark Leroy Jackson fuses soulfulness and tender masculinity.

The cast has just one major weakness: Kirk McDonald fails to deliver enough maturity and sly sophistication, as filmmaker-narrator Mark, to drive home the musical's savvy New York spirit.

Listening to the award-winning Broadway score on compact disc beforehand -- a necessity to understand every word against the rhythmic percussion and piercing guitar twangs of the five-member onstage band -- can only deepen one's appreciation of the show's creator, Jonathan Larson.

When Rent fulfills its electrifying potential, it's mainly because of Larson's fluency with a dizzying array of musical traditions. Mark and Joanne commiserate over his former and her current lover in a hilarious Tango: Maureen, while Joanne and Maureen evoke Aretha Franklin in a soulful duet, Take Me as I Am.

La Vie Boheme, the brilliant first-act finale, builds to an operatic crescendo, pauses for a serious romantic interlude between Roger and Mimi and a comic one between Maureen and Joanne, drops every trendy name from Sondheim to Sontag and spirals up again into a dramatic summary of every major character and relationship.

If Larson had not died just before the show's first New York preview, would he have smoothed the show's rougher edges and raised the rest of Rent to heaven?

We'll never know, but Larson's loss adds an extra level of emotion to the aching romantic tragedy onstage.