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| by Rob
Thomas The Capital Times April 20, 2000 |
The title of the theater
phenomenon known as ''Rent'' implies that we are all tenants on this earth, never knowing
when our lease is going to run out. That ''seize the moment'' message runs all through Jonathan Larson's Pulitzer Prize-winning musical. And though there might be problems with the play itself, especially a slow second act with a perfunctory climax, that message remains a potent one. The touring company that brought ''Rent'' to the Madison Civic Center this week is uniformly excellent, featuring performers who can not only raise the roof with their singing, but create convincing and sympathetic characters. As the play opens, rent is foremost on the minds of Roger (Cary Shields) and Mark (Matt Caplan), two roommates living in an unheated industrial loft on the seamy side of New York City. Roger's a musician and Mark's a filmmaker, and they're part of a tight-knit community of artists existing somewhere around the poverty line. They're also both shut off from the world in different ways. Roger is HIV-positive and still mourning the suicide of his former girlfriend, while Mark keeps life at arm's length by viewing it through a camera lens. Other members of their circle include a self-involved performance artist, her long-suffering girlfriend, a dispirited philosophy teacher and a drag queen with an unshakably optimistic view of life. A former roommate, Benjamin (Brian M. Love), is now Mark and Roger's landlord, and plans to evict them and the homeless living in a vacant lot next door in order to build a ''cyber arts studio.'' To his former friends, Benjamin is betraying the counterculture movement he came from. To Benjamin, he's being practical, realizing his dream of being an artist and being well-paid. ''Bohemia is just a fallacy in your head/This is Calcutta. Bohemia is dead,'' he sings. What's especially odd about ''Rent'' is that it celebrates bohemian culture of the 1990s with music that seems ripped from the most mainstream 1980s rock imaginable. This is a rock opera, full of soaring choruses, synthesizer lines and glistening power chords (a five-piece band performs the music live). It can sometimes be cheesy, but it can also be very effective on a song like ''Seasons of Love,'' particularly with the entire company belting it out together. Horace V. Rogers also does a beautiful job with ''I'll Cover You,'' and Caplan, who is strong throughout, really sells ''What You Own.'' In a lighter vein, Caplan and Jacqueline B. Arnold are terrific comparing notes on a lover in the wry ''Tango Maureen.'' And as Maureen, Erin Keaney is spectacularly funny doing a ''performance art piece'' that sends up the self-importance and just plain oddness of the genre. But, like too many musicals, ''Rent'' follows up a swift, enjoyable first act with a rather sluggish and pedestrian second act. The subplots and conflicts between characters set up early on seem forgotten rather than resolved, and the death of one character and the near-death of another seem thrown in arbitrarily to bring some weight to the play. The sound system also seemed designed for a rock concert rather than a stage play. While the loudness was fine for the bigger numbers, the wordier songs were pretty hard to understand. But these flaws don't really
detract from the essential enjoyment of Larson's romanticized portrait of counterculture
life, or his message to those who swim in the mainstream. |