by Terry Morris
Dayton Daily News
March 4, 1999

Musicals in which 1. a man kisses a man dressed as a woman while 2. a woman fondles another woman and 3. an HIV-positive man embraces an HIV-positive, heroin-addicted woman don't come along every day draped in Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize.

Then again, neither do musicals with the power, the music and the voices of Jonathan Larson's solitarily glorious Rent, which opened for the first time in Dayton Tuesday night at Memorial Hall.

Dayton is not the East Village, the gritty, heartless setting for this contemporary La Bohme in which young adults are dying, starving, experimenting, creating, resisting the system, throwing tantrums, changing lovers, losing them and finding them.

But neither is Broadway, where tourists paying top dollar continue to reinforce the smash-hit status of a show in which a chorus of the homeless may as well sing Christmas carols, because they aren't going to get a dime from the penniless artists in their midst.

Those artist types include: Mark, the unattached narrator who is perpetually attached to his film camera; songwriter Roger, who hooks up with HIV-positive junkie Mimi after being dumped by another whose parting words were, "We have AIDS"; the drag queen-street performer Angel, who pairs up with M.I.T. renegade philosopher Tom Collins; and bisexual performance artist Maureen, who dropped Mark for lawyer Joanne and leads the audience in a spirited session of "mooing" during Act. 1.

A sleepy Sunday morning in the suburbs it ain't.

Then again, neither is the kingdom of Thailand in the old favorite The King and I, which played the Victoria Theatre a few weeks ago.

Despite its bold immediacy, Rent isn't reality.

It's an electric, electrifying musical, performed by well-paid, well-fed, extremely well-trained and ably directed performers like Dayton native Scott Hunt, whose expressive energy as filmmaker Mark is one of this national tour's numerous advantages.

It's a fantasy in which even the dead (Angel, played by Pierre Angelo Bayuga) and the near-dead (Mimi, played by Julia Santana) revive before the curtain calls.

The characters, their maddening-saddening actions and spirited antics are site- and situation-specific. But the marvelous and varied songs in the late Mr. Larson's first and only Broadway score raise Rent to a near-universal experience.

The Act 2-opening Seasons of Love, sung in Chorus Line fashion by the entire cast at the edge of the stage, could be in almost any show, which is not to say it's ordinary. It's a reassuring anthem that returns occasionally, once to bank the fire set by Maureen (Cristina Fadale) and Joanne's (Danielle Lee Greaves) in the fiery and passionate Take Me or Leave Me.

Performed by the powerful-

voiced Christian Mena as Roger, One Song Glory could be Larson's song. He died at 36. Mimi's Out Tonight is a theme for the young and the pent up. I'll Cover You, by Angel and Collins (Dwayne Clark), is a love song. Same goes for Without You, by Roger and Mimi.

Recurring themes--"I should tell you," "Today for you, tomorrow for me," "Would you light my candle?"--are subtle connectors for scenes meant with an intermittent, impromptu quality as enacted on a stage that also contains the band.

Compared to the achievement in music and lyrics, the characters are shallow and unevenly drawn. Despite an attempt to soften and redeem her in Act 2, Mimi lacks the dimension of Angel, for example. And what of Mark? He's still alone with his camera when the suggested happy ending arrives.

There have been rock musicals before. Echoes of Evita, Hair and Tommy can be heard in Rent, along with rock flavors from Prince to gospel. But there's no mistaking the fact that this show is an expression of individual musical theater genius. Its like won't be seen again anytime soon.