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THEftTEII
R ent
hits home
with an
inspirational
message
about the
fleeting
nature of
life and
what we
make of it
by F lora S ussely
didn’t expect to like it. After all, this is a
“rock opera” with the undisguised plot of
Puccini’s La Boheme. And I wondered if the
success of Rent wasn’t due in great part to the
fact that its composer, Jonathan Larson, had
died just two hours after its final dress rehearsal.
Talk about life imitating art—it is poignant, a
tragedy of operatic proportions.
Imagine my surprise when, within minutes
of the show’s opening, I was in tears. A bit later
I was smiling broadly and laughing heartily,
then crying again. Finally, I was jumping up
with applause before the stage lights came back
up for curtain call.
Rent is indeed a surprisingly engaging ver
■
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Timeless in Desic
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sion of the standard “starving artists dying in
their prime after a wine and song and passion.”
Except that we are not seeing flamboyant
Mediterraneans doing it. These are
Americans—African Americans, Jews from
“good” families, kids that should know better.
And that is probably why this show succeeds so
beautifully.
Larson has written in a very North
American ’90s style, both lyrically and melodi-
cally. The libretto at times spells out our culture
(“hand-crafted beers made in local breweries, to
yoga, to yogurt, to rice and beans and cheese, to
leather, to dildos, to curry vindaloo, to huevos
rancheros and Maya Angelou...to Sontag, to
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Sondheim, to anything taboo”) and sets to
music the analytical way modem North
Americans perceive life. In “Seasons of Love,”
while a very catchy melody comforts us, the
lyrics remind us that some of us are dying and
counting the minutes we have (“Five hundred
twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes, Five
hundred twenty-five thousand moments so
dear”).
Director Michael Greif worked with Larson
on the original show, so it is not surprising that
everything works so beautifully. The actors and
lighting (designed by Blake Burra) create spaces
in a set that essentially remains the same
throughout the show. This is perhaps the
ombard
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antithesis of Phantom of the Opera or Les
Misérables, in which sets and costumes are part
of the spectacle. In that sense, Rent also breaks
a bit with the operatic proportions expected.
Instead, the drama is entirely in the music, the
poetry and the quantity of talent on the stage.
Everyone on the stage is an actor, a dancer
and a singer—that is what musical theater
requires. The wondrous part about this ensem
ble, though, is the way we identify and bond to
these people almost immediately. Consider the
universal desire to leave a thing of beauty
before we die. Moments into the show, when
Roger, who like many of Rent’s characters, car
ries HIV, sings “One song, Glory, before I go,”
we feel the impact of that raw need.
In some ways, this modem day Bohème
makes more sense in that we can sympathize, if
not empathize, with a character’s rushed fall into
love. HIV creates its own urgency. In Bohème,
we really have to wonder what kind of girl Mimi
is that she falls in love with Rodolpho after one
little song about how cold her hands are!
This show does not glorify all artists as tal
ented. In fact, some of the funniest bits are at
the expense of avant-garde and self-indulgent
performance art. But, at its root it’s about that
world in which the creative soul lives and dies
unrecognized and unappreciated. It is about the
brotherhood of those who choose that lifestyle
and those who love them for the courage to do
so. It is about love as the ultimate artistic
expression.
Throughout this work, which does includes
some trite pop music, there is a sense of wonder
that we all survive and in some ways thrive, as
long as we have loved one another. That is
Rent’s lasting message. We walk out of the show
singing what we already know: “There’s only
this, there’s only yes, no other road, no other
way, no day but today!”
At its conclusion, we do not mourn the loss
es but celebrate that we have known these peo
ple. The stage lights up with the film clips one
character has been shooting of his bohemian
family. We sit in darkness and see these faces we
now love, some whom we miss, most of whom
we will remember. As maudlin as it is, it moves
us. We want to sing and dance and paint and
write and love before we die.
Indeed, no day but today.
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