by Douglas J. Keating
Philadelphia Inquirer
September 14, 2000

Broadway shows are not the usual fare at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts, but the music-shed setting is a good match for the pop-rock musical Rent, which plays there through Sunday.

With a high-volume, driving musical score its most attractive attribute, and large colorful ensemble numbers among its best songs, this Rent fills the Mann's spacious seating area with sound and its stage with colorful activity. The musical-venue setting, onstage electrified band, visibly miked performers, dramatic lighting design, and high amplification give this production the sound and feel of a rock concert, making it even more alluring to the largely youthful audience Rent attracts.

Rent's creator Jonathan Larson - who died at the age of 35 right before the show's Off-Broadway debut in 1996 - based it on the opera La Boheme, adapting and updating the story by moving it from 19th-century Paris to his own neighborhood - New York's East Village. The musical is peopled with a multicultural collection of contemporary "bohemians," aspiring artists, street people and drug addicts who are involved in a range of gay and nongay sexual relationships.

They are a colorful bunch, but in the two productions of Rent I have seen, the characters have not come to life enough to draw me into their stories, in which AIDS replaces consumption as the agent of death for the much too young. Larson doesn't develop the characters or their relationships fully, and his ballads and duets often don't magnify the emotion of the moment forcefully enough.

In the Mann production, these deficiencies are made more apparent by the very high and wide music stage, which tends to diminish the performers and amplify the bleak, empty feeling engendered by the stark brick-wall-and-steel-frame setting.

While the actors here are competent and for the most part vocally strong, there are no outstandingly vivid portrayals - except in the relatively minor role of Joanne. The impact of the presentation also suffers from a lack of electricity in the primary romantic relationship of Roger and Mimi (Saycon Sengbloh). This may have be at least partially the result of the fact that an understudy, Joshua Kobak, played the role of Roger on opening night Tuesday. (In fact, either Kobak or another understudy will take the part until actor Christian Mena arrives to replace the performer currently listed in the program.)

Rent is sung through and musically rich, particularly when Larson masses the combined voices of the company. These ensemble numbers both exemplify the youthful energy of the community - in the exuberant, spirited "Christmas Bells" - and its sad realization of the illness stalking it, in the resigned but triumphant "Seasons of Love," which counts the number of minutes in a final year of life.

It is more accurate to refer to Rent as an opera than a musical. Like an opera, its entertainment value lies in its music and the way it is presented, not so much in the characters and plot so important to the typical Broadway musical. Let the well-performed music of this production carry you along in its forceful flow, and Rent can provide an enjoyable experience.