CanadianSnowbird: Great to hear you had an awesome time seeing Rent. Yay!
I've seen this cast three times now, and I have to agree that Jed and Tracy are the standouts. Bryce, in my opinon, is not always consistant with his chemistry. It's there during "Light My Candle" and all the interactions with Jed are great. However, by "Your Eyes," I feel no real sense of loss with his Roger. His voice is a higher tenor and very smooth. Very nice, but I personally prefer a voice that is lower and with a more rough, rock sound to it.
Arianda has a very Daphne-type voice. However, she pushes her voice too much during "Out Tonight." "Another Day" ends up suffering due to the damage done to her voice. The first time I saw her, she was cracking and wavering with notes on "Another Day." You could see people visably cringe during the song. I was sending positive vibes to her in hope that her voice will recover. It did by Act II.
I did the stage door after the second time seeing it in St. Louis. The cast liked my scarf. (Funny dialogue. Another fan asked if Jed could sign his playbill. Jed said that he didn't have a pen, but the person with scarf probably does.) The guy playing Angel even said, "I need to ask you, dear, where did you get that scarf?" I told him I made it and it was my first venture into knitting. He said, "To be quite honest, it's better than the one used on stage." Depite having a defective pen (the back end of it had snapped off, and the cast had to sign with the plastic tube portion), the stage door experience was fun.
Thanks for the review, Billboard Girl.
Mariel
Updated On: 5/10/06 at 06:43 PM