by Lawson Taitte
Dallas Morning News
March 31, 1999

Some avid Rent fans who learned the score from the cast album express anxiety about seeing it in the theater. No performers, they fear, can ever match the voices and personalities they've heard all those times.

Not to worry. The touring company that opened Rent for Casa Manana in Fort Worth's Bass Performance Hall can hold its own any day.

Scott Hunt's Mark, for instance, looks a little like Anthony Rapp, who created the part. But Mr. Hunt brings a vulnerability that adds a whole new dimension to this detached, idealistic filmmaker.

Cristina Fadale stops the show - twice - as Mark's ex-girlfriend Maureen. Her insouciant comic timing and unthreatening intensity make the bisexual siren a starring role. As the seraphic drag queen Angel, Pierre Angelo Bayuga adds an unexpectedly naughty brand of spice. Christian Mena and Julia Santana proved they were the ideal Roger and Mimi, those HIV-positive and drug-tormented lovers, when they played in Dallas last spring, and they do so again in Fort Worth.

The actors aren't the only ones who perform miracles in Rent. Jonathan Larson's score remains the most soaringly melodic to grace a Broadway show in decades. Anyone who doesn't get goose bumps by the time Roger launches into "One Song Glory" needs to have his ears - or heart - checked out. This cast does especially well by the less-famous numbers that dot the second act. "Take Me or Leave Me" and "Without You" seem like major inspirations here.

The show's audacity in stirring up hornets' nests is another kind of miracle. One couple in the third row at Tuesday's opening did leave early - right after Mimi's supersexy "Out Tonight." But all the proper theatergoers who sit through that nervy list song "La Vie Boheme," with its praises of sodomy and other activities not promoted in Sunday schools, provoke wonder.

Of course, maybe they just didn't hear the lyrics. The sound at Bass Hall is marginally better than the dismal acoustics that plagued Rent at Dallas' Majestic Theatre last year. This show just has a hard time making itself heard in a house with more than 1,000 seats. For that reason - but no other - some fans might indeed be happier listening to their CDs.