Rent is Terrible — Page 2

I saw Rent last night for the first time in almost 4 years. I have to say, surprisingly, for a show that's been on Broadway for eight years, it's doing remarkably well. Is the show in need of some tightening? Yes. Michael Greif needs to come back and work some moments, but overall, the show is in pretty good shape. The cast has been doing the show for a while, and it's lost some of it's energy and focus. Without singling out any one performer, almost all of them need to go back and look at the script, there are a lot of lines being thrown away, barely audible, and had I not seen the show several times, I wouldn't have known what was going on. Having heard so many people express dissapointment in the show, I was expecting much worse. The energy of the Nederlander is so much different than it was back in 96, cast and audience. The people that sat near me last night would never have seen the show at NYTW or Off-Broadway, Rent has become a brand name, and like all brand names it's become marginalized in the process.

---

immensely...exceedingly.

---

"And what's *scary* is to realize he could probably channel all of us."

Etoile, I've got it! He's really Shirley McLaine. (Let's just call this may latest, but certainly not final, theory.)

---

I belong to the (small?) group of people who do not like Rent. My first taste of the show was the OBC CD. I'd heard so much about this show that I couldn't wait to hear it! I was very disappointed when I did hear it. I didn't see what all the fuss was about. Most of the music did nothing for me. So when it finally toured here (in Chicago), I saw it with my wife. Neither of us cared for it much. Neither the music, the characters, or the story really grabbed me. Maybe I just didn't "get it". It just bored me. I WANTED to like it, but couldn't. Maybe it just couldn't live up to all the hype?

Now, Tick, Tick... Boom! is a CD that I could listen to for days at a time (and I have!). Those songs (especially WHY) really touch me. Why does one Larson show really touch me, and the other does absolutely nothing? I'm not sure.

Now it was a touring company that I saw. If I'd gone to NYC in '96 and seen it, would I have liked it any more?

---

*gulp* i hope you're joking.

---

Well, I saw it first at NY Theatre Workshop and disliked most of it -- thought it needed another draft or two. I made it to the end of the show, but several friends walked out at intermission. I also saw it at the end of previews on Broadway because a friend on the creative team gave me comps (and asked me to give it a second chance). It was worse -- clearly in their haste to move it uptown, no one had had the time to reconceive the production for an 1100 seat theatre (my friend -- who shall remain nameless here -- admitted he had NO IDEA what he was doing.... and it showed).

Understand, I had lived in the East Village for several years by the time RENT came out (I had lived a block from NYTW since '89), long before it gentrified and became an overpriced hipster theme park in the mid-90's. My circle of friends were artists and writers and waiters and actors and bartenders etc, in the neighborhood. I knew and socialized with the immigrants who'd been long-time residents there, as well as the drag queens and performance artists, the hustlers and the drug dealers, the activists and the squat dwellers on 13th Street .... in short, all of the people RENT tries to depict -- those were my friends. And I'm sorry the sanitized, surburb-safe versions of those folks that RENT portrayed made my stomach turn.

The music was trite with a very 70's era "middle of the road" adult contemporary feel, the lyrics banal, the book messy and Grief's staging mostly static and unimaginative (or derivative with the whole Chorus Line -esque Seasons of Love sing-a-long). And that "Up With People" travesty, "La Vie Boheme" very well may be the corniest song and production number I've ever seen or heard in my life; it single-handedly drove a half dozen friends of mine out of NYTW, howling with laughter onto 4th Street and into The Bar -- a former longtime institution at 2nd & 4th -- where I found them a few minutes later still laughing too hard to even consider returning for Act II. I returned mainly on the strength of "Will I ?" which I thought was effective. Act II has a few moments that work (the lesbian duet comes to mind), but the show completely came undone for me when Mimi magically came back to life..... I've rarely been so offended by a moment in a dramatic work as I was then. As someone who spent literally hundreds of hours on the 14th (really 13th) floor of St. Vincent's Hospital (plus, NYU, Cabrini, Bellevue and a few others) watching dozens of friends and acquaintances die of that disease, I found the ending insulting and contemptable.

RENT promised to be "the musical" of my generation of East Village artists, but to most of us stepping over the syringes that filled the streets back then and watching our friends die on a regular basis, it was a very homogenized, almost Disney-fied version of our reality. It lacked anything approaching a real East Village sensibility, especially the bland music. We had a wait a couple of years before HEDWIG delivered on that promise -- now, John Mitchell & Steve Trask understood and NAILED the whole angry but carefree, punk-inflected, hedonistic, Pyramid/Boy Bar/SAVE THE ROBOTS, "rock and roll fag bar" sensibility that was the true undercurrent of the East Village in those days (I remember running into John all the time back then and recall the early incarnations of HEDWIG at Squeezebox). I think it's interesting that most of the jukeboxes in the East Village had the cast album of HEDWIG on it at one point (the music was so authentic that it could blend seamlessly in with everything else) while I can't remember any place ever having RENT as an option, except as a joke.

Hey, it's all subjective, so if you love the show, good for you. While I liked a couple of the songs (which is more than several of my friends at the time would say), overall it was a major disappointment for me on nearly every level -- book, score, staging, et al. I'm well aware that Mr. Larson died before he could fix everything (and that's certainly a shame), but evaluating the show as is, it struck me as rather underwhelming as a whole, pretty corny at times, misguided and offensive at times, but with an occasional spark of real inspiration -- a few small moments that were potent and effective, but not nearly enough of them to sustain my interest over the course of a two+ hour show.

---

Updated On: 5/11/04 at 04:04 PM

I thank you, MargoChanning, for providing your reasons for disliking the show. They entirely respectable, and I wouldn't doubt that the majority of people who lived in the neighborhood that you did feel the same way. I think that will always be a hurdle in the creative process, though not one that will always be cleared.

I'm not going to go into my thoughts on the subject because I do far too often as it is, but I must say, it's a lot easier to see the points of view of others when they actually make them visible, like the post above. There are a lot of blanket statements made toward this, and other, shows and it is hard to take them seriously when there is no experience or example backing them up.

Just my two cents.

Well, I always assumed that Mimi died not too later. Maybe not that exact moment, or that day, but she was pretty damn sick, and that last scene isn't a miracle cure.

That said, the way it ends has always been my least favorite part of the show, but it would be entirely different show if Mimi had died, for better or for worse.

Absolutely! The way that Mimi just suddenly is okay shows nothing about real life. That still eats away at me whenever someone mentions the show.

---

I have to agree, the broadway version of Rent is slipping. I saw it on tour in the fall and fell in love instantly with everything- the music, costumes, characters. Even the part where Mimi didn't die, though it's entirely unbelieveble, I liked. [It's a show about second chances and LIVING, so I thought it was appropriate] But the Brodaway version [saw it a few weeks ago] just fell short of my expectations, even in the Pre-Spice Girl days. I despise the guy who played Roger- his One Song Glory was overdone and terrible. I think it needs freshened up, not killed. They need to go back to Rent's roots and breath some life into the show. That's why I love the CD, I really feel the emotions in it. I am, and always will be, a Renthead but I think it could be revitalized.

Oh, FANTASTIC REVIEW, Socrates! I applaud you! *Eye roll* Care to tell us WHY you have such a negative opinion of the show?

---

Why is it that it is assumed that people who like Rent don't see other shows? Granted, I haven't seen THAT many, but I've also only been following Broadway closely for three years, and I'm on a budget, so I'm fairly pleased that I've seen the 25+ I have. And I still love Rent. Perhaps I just need to be shot.