by Warren Gerds
Press Gazette
March 29, 2001

"Rent'' is back at the Weidner Center, and the production is energized.  Tuesday's opening-night audience showed the kind of split personality that goes along with this rock-rooted musical.

From the student rush seats -- mezzanine and balcony ($10 each) – waves of cheers and screams washed over folks in the orchestra-level, higher-priced seats ($56 tops).

That youthful, all-out zeal is crucial in making this show click.  The cast is fine -- intense and limber -- though not as vocally consistent and strong as the 1999 visiting production.  Some moments soar.  Maggie Benjamin is terrific in one of the hallmark numbers.  She plays performance artist Maureen, who delivers a spacey, comic, avant-garde "artiste'' piece, "Over the Moon.''  Benjamin makes this stunning. When she calls, "Moo me!'' the audience does -- and that's the hallmark bit.

Benjamin also wows (with Jacqueline B. Arnold) in the lesbian love song, "Take Me or Leave Me.'' 

Matt Caplan delivers bolts of electricity as Mark, the documentary-making narrator. Dominique Roy is wiry and sexy as Mimi, the exotic dancer.  Shaun Earl is a different kind of sexy as the flaming Angel.

Jeremy Kushier brings Roger's powerful angst to the fore -- about his girlfriend's suicide, being HIV-positive and being lured by Mimi.

"Rent'' doesn't hold much back.  It has a contemporary urban sensibility. That means a presence of junkies, squatters, gays and lesbians (kissing, too), rough language and other things not in "Late Nite Catechism.''
The show is an encyclopedia of literary, musical and street-wise references.  It bumps into such things as AZT, the opera "La Boheme'' (in Roger's guitar notes), the earthy "Carmina Burana'' classical choral work and the biblical Last Supper.

"Rent'' is not your average musical.

It won the Pulitzer Prize.

It's a rarity in its youth appeal.