Inspired
by Puccini's La Bohème, Rent portrays the bohemian
side of New York in the early 90s, which echoes the bohemia of Paris
in the 19th century. The musical documents a year in the lives of a
group of friends, who also happen to be young struggling artists trying
to keep their place in the city. They defy convention and reject mainstream
culture, living life on a day-to-day basis and living for their art.
The main characters, Mark, an aspiring filmmaker, and Roger, a songwriter
wannabe trying to compose a hit before his pending death, are roommates
who hold no steady jobs and are unable to obtain the next rent payment.
They have abandoned the pursuit of comfort and financial security to
focus fully on their art. Their friends - Angel, Collins, Mimi, Maureen
and Joanne - also pursue unstable lifestyles. Some of them do occasional
odd jobs to get by, which may extend to ridiculous tasks like playing
to a dog till it barks to its death.
Most of these principle characters are all HIV-positive, and are basically
living life not knowing whether their next breath will be their last,
which is probably why they have little concern for the future, and live
like there is "no day but today". Indeed, the fragility of their lives
does not prevent them from living with passion for the dreams they pursue.
Each character's life is dependent on his/her friend/lover to keep
him/her going, and it is, really, love that sustains them. Like the
musical's most famous song, Seasons of Love, Rent
emphasises love, the most precious thing a person can offer to those
around him/her to support and uphold life.
I attended the musical harbouring mixed expectations. I suppose one
can never go wrong with a Broadway musical, and an award-winning one
at that, but my concern was what seemed like the major selling point
of this 10th anniversary tour: Karen Mok. Though she is a well-known,
award-winning artiste in the region, her ability to perform well in
a musical remained questionable.
Generally speaking, Rent did well. In terms of its music and
ensemble performance it proved itself to be worthy of the awards it
has won. Each actor in the ensemble has been part of the production
at one point or another in the past ten years, which gave them the necessary
experience and familiarity with the show. The strongest performances
came from the ensemble. Songs presented by them (such as Seasons
of Love, and Another Day) were harmonised effortlessly,
and the energy level of the ensemble scenes also tended to be stronger
than that of the soloists' scenes.
Mok's vocal performance was hardly equal to the other cast members'.
Her already-low energy level fizzled out as the show went on, and she
looked more like she was singing in a pop concert than acting the part
of Mimi. Casting her as Jeremy Kushnier's love interest didn't help.
Kushnier (playing Roger) was one of the stronger performers in the cast,
both for singing and acting. His heartfelt solo performance of One
Song Glory brought out his character's loneliness and frustration
as someone who has AIDS and who has to carry the emotional baggage of
his girlfriend's suicide upon realising she had contracted the disease.
Tango: Maureen performed by Mark (Trey Ellet) and Joanne (Danielle
Lee Greaves) definitely lifted the show in the first act. This duet,
performed by the past and current love interests of Maureen, was funny
because both characters hated each other's guts, yet were put together
in the most unlikely position of Mark being called by Maureen to assist
Joanne in setting up some sound equipment. While agreeing on Maureen's
terrible but addictive traits as a lover, they danced the tango.
My biggest gripe of the night would be the technical glitches. Sound
cues were not sharp. There were many instances, especially in act one,
where microphones were not turned on in time, resulting in inaudible
bits, and this got rather irritating after a while. The follow spot
was also occasionally switched on at the wrong time, and at other times
it was focused on the wrong actor. In the closing scene, Mark was supposed
to project his completed film onto a wall upstage. But before he could
aim his projector, there was already a larger, clearer projection of
the same film playing there. It was rather puzzling. I cannot decide
if it was a miscommunication between the technical crew and the actor,
or just a bad idea of the director's.
All in all, Rent's plot was well-intended, its humour tongue-in-cheek
("I'm a New Yorker, fear's my life!"), and the tunes that ranged from
pop to blues to tango provided the audience with a rather distinctive
experience for a musical. But, despite the hype, Rent failed
to inspire.
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"Rent's plot was well-intended, its humour tongue-in-cheek
("I'm a New Yorker, fear's my life!"), but, despite the hype, it
failed to inspire"
Credits
Cast: Karen Mok, Jeremy Kushnier, Trey Ellet, John
Eric Parker, Daryle C Brown, Danielle Lee Greaves, Andy Senor, Caren
Lyn Manuel, Erin Greiner, Daxfurth Houston, Jeff Scott Carey, Tye Blue,
Rebecca Naomi Jones, Dan Domenech, Domenique Roy, Adrianne Fishe, Frank
Lawson, Alison Leo and Yanick Lanthier
See Also
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From: The Editor (matthewlyon@myway.com / Friday, December 9, 2005 at 18:22:54)
Got anything to say about the review or the production? Click the button above to let us know.
From: Matthew Lyon (matthewlyon@myway.com / Friday, December 9, 2005 at 18:25:15)
I can't say I agree with the many accolades heaped upon Jonathan Larson's Rent - it seems to me to be a mixed bag of naivety and calculation poured upon the stage too quickly.
And I find it rather hard to sympathise with a group of people who demand to live in an apartment rent-free so they can devote their lives to making extemely bad art extemely slowly. For example, it takes Roger a whole year to produce a song that sounds like it was written by a developmentally challenged fourteen-year-old.
I also find it hard to sympathise with a show that derides commercial success and the upwardly mobile but has become a profitable institution targeted at the middle classes.
But if you like this kind of thing, here is about as good a production as you're likely to see. Certainly the quality of the cast makes this run vastly superior to SRT's 2001 attempt, and the cast includes the much-hyped Karen Mok, whose vocals are slightly below par, but who invests impressively in her character's emotional moments. Unfortunately, Mok suffers by comparison to her romantic interest, Jeremy Kushnier as Roger, who almost single-handedly made me care about the clunky narrative and whose performance was as superior to the rest of the cast (even the good ones) as the musical's one showstopper, Seasons of Love, is to the rest of the songs.
From: Kenneth Kwok (bluekei@yahoo.com / Friday, December 9, 2005 at 18:27:01)
Frenetic, melodramatic and overwrought - yet that is probably the production's very source of appeal to self-professed "Rentheads" the world over. Personally, I found all the sound and fury to be less than stirring and curiously unengaging despite the spirited and uniformly excellent performances by all the cast and the good intentions of the script. The incessant intercutting of songs and stories made it difficult to develop strong feelings for the cast of characters and sadly, many of the songs have not aged well. But there were a few exceptions (e.g. One Song Glory; La Vie Bohème; Goodbye, Love) and arguably, these alone were so incredibly well-performed that they render any indictment against the whole production moot.
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