no author
In-Pittsburgh
June 3, 1998

I worried a lot about this review of Rent--I mean, the writer dropped dead the night before the show went into previews and, rumors to the contrary, I'm not a completely unfeeling bitch.

On one hand, I planned to praise its many virtues: The show is a rock/musical theater retelling of La Boheme, set in New York's East Village. Rent might not be exactly the theatrical revolution that has been promised, but after the cinematic/cartoon/British fantasy pieces which have ruled Broadway for two decades, it's startling and extraordinarily welcome to see a show that's about something, with characters who are actual people, not cutesy live-action animation.

But while I am handing out hosannas, there are problems: Larson's sentimentality, which seems intrusive and unearned; the schizophrenia of a wholly integrated first act and a second which bumps from number to number, skimming over weeks, months and seasons. And the fact that among its eight principals, Larson chooses to focus on Roger, the very least interesting of the bunch.

But, really, who wants to pick on a dead man? My worries are over, however, because I can gripe about something else: this production.

Though I've listened to the CD until I ruined it, I could barely understand a word this young, extremely energetic cast was singing on the Heinz Hall stage. This is, quite simply, the worst sound mix I've heard in 12 years of reviewing (including barns, wood sheds and every theater company Richard Rauh hasn't donated a sound system to).

This leaves you with little choice but to gawk, slack-jawed, at Michael Greif's direction. When it's not banal, it's counterproductive; when it's not curiously static, it's incomprehensible; and when it's obvious, it's like being beaten over the head.

Somehow surviving the sound and the direction is the highly skilled cast. I especially enjoyed D'Monroe's slickly smarmy Benjamin Coffin III, Monique Daniels and Leigh Hetherington's duet "Take Me or Leave Me" and, for every moment he had on stage (including ripping my heart out with "I'll Cover You"), Mark Leroy Jackson is levitating as Tom Collins.