by Steffen Silvas
Willamette Week
August 26, 1998

Larson wanted to accomplish two tasks with Rent: to introduce the so-marketed MTV generation to theater and to change the course of the Euro-American musical of today. Unfortunately, he failed at both, and no one can know whether he would have ever succeeded. Certainly, he learned much from MTV's editing techniques, for the stage is continuously moving with scene falling upon scene, all connected by the most tenuous narrative links. But musically, MTV's eclectic pottage of techno, rap and rock is forsaken for the simple pop balladry of VH1. Rather than signalling a new awakening in the moribund musical, Larson's "poperetta" stands as a pastiche of the genre. The influences of Godspell, Hair and A Chorus Line are palpable, and inspiration from Sondheim, while negligible, is nonetheless apparent. There are a couple of memorable songs, "Without You" and "One Song Glory," that may, like Godspell's "Day by Day," live past the show. But much is banal ("Light My Candle"), mawkish ("I'll Cover You") and safe ("What You Own").

It should pass without comment that Rent is a reworking of Puccini's La Bohème. Larson's respect for that work is recognizable, and he cleverly weaves fragments of that work throughout his own. New York's East Village serves as the modern Bohemia, with a close community of artists and outcasts (synonymous in America) working and struggling on the fringe of society. Painters are now filmmakers, poets are songwriters, and absinthe is heroin. Rather than consumption, the scourge is AIDS. But the daily grind of poverty and scraping up rent is, as in Puccini's Bohemia, made endurable by the shared creative experience and la vie Bohème. The great, and perhaps only, strength in Rent is Larson's genuine affection for this milieu and his simple wish that we "engage"; His enthusiasm drives the work, and at times one can't help but be caught up in the exuberance of the piece. But doubt about Larson's vision comes well before the curtain's fall. His East Village seems too sanitized and geared for popular consumption. The characters inform us that they are despairing and confused, yet nothing in the script can match one sentence of East Villager David Wojnarowicz's work, nor does one hear anything approaching the authentic wails of Diamanda Galas, though she is acknowledged in parody.

Larson's play has swept away the likes of Ann Magnuson, Ethyl Eichelberger and Tim Miller from their own community and replaced them with more cuddlesome characters. There's the HIV-positive exotic dancer with a heart of gold, a childlike performing artist who riffs on "Heigh Diddle-Diddle," a chorus of homeless people who seem on the verge of breaking into "Get Me to the Church on Time," and a sweet-natured drag queen who expires and, in a bow to Tony Kushner, becomes an angel. (The character's name, happily, is Angel--but why, yet again, does the queer have to die?) As Rent is a celebration of life, death's poking about is otherwise unwelcomed. Even Mimi, the HIV-positive dancer who has found true love, not to mention a worrisome degree of hypothermia, is resurrected on her deathbed after having traveled through the rumored "tunnel of light" in which, yes, she saw Angel (cue "To Life").

Blessed with a wealth of superb singing from Mark Leroy Jackson, Andy Señor, Leigh Hetherington and Julia Santana (from whom only the odd skirl of vibrato is heard), and excellently choreographed by Marlies Yearby, Rent possesses an energy seldom seen in the plodding sideshows of Lloyd-Webber and Co. and joins recent Broadway shows such as Stomp! and Bring in da Noise... that, in their own fashion, offer slight rebellion to the standard marketed Broadway product. But Rent is only the next product line. How sad that a struggling young artist died, we'll think as we jog around our suburban cul-de-sacs accessorized in commemorative Rent T-shirts, pepper mace stashed in matching Rent fanny-packs, prepared for "engagement."