Rent Combines Rocking Music with Serious Message
By Jeyling Chou
Associate Editor
Despite the fact that it is set, for the most part, around Christmas in New York City, the music of Rent is festive year round – even in mid October in San Francisco. Despite the fact that the chorus to one of the songs declares, “when you’re living in America at the end of the millennium…” the message of Rent is timeless.
The late Jonathan Larson’s rock opera toast to the projects of New York and its starving artists is at the Curran Theater through October 18. The music is rollicking and poignant, the characters are colorful and memorable. But Rent – for all its jubilant, defiant commotion – is set against the backdrop of serious commentary on AIDS, homophobia and drug addiction.
This is Rent’s Broadway Tour, which has made its way to a modest theater in the heart of one the cities that loves it most. This production very excitingly features the bona fide original protagonists, the very same dudes who are on the soundtrack: Mark and Roger. That would be Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal, respectively.
To be able to listen live to the OG Mark and Roger makes a Rent nut like me swoon at the thought. The second the guitar starts strumming for the first song, I am transported back to high school when I listened to this soundtrack nonstop for an entire summer. It’s love and nostalgia at first sound.
And when I saw it opening night on October 6th, the entire Curran seemed to swoon with me. Every time a new character appeared, they stepped on stage to thundering applause. Like an old friend.
“December 24th, 9 p.m. …” the musical famously begins in Mark and Roger’s tiny New York flat (for which, of course, they can’t afford to pay rent). From there, it’s a whirlwind through love of all types – heterosexual and homosexual – a celebration of La Vie Boheme, several major holidays, a sex scene, a funeral, tearful goodbyes, and a reunion.
Rapp and Pascal were both fantastic in the roles they had originated in 1994. Their voices were comforting, familiar, and no one else could be as Mark and Roger-ish. But Lexi Lawson as Mimi Marquez was a pleasant surprise. Her voice was soothing and soaring, lacking the characteristic raspiness of soundtrack Mimi. Next to two of Rent’s greatest giants, in some ways, I think Mimi stole the show.
Anyone who has loved or lost can identify with the characters who run the gamut from a charming cross dresser to a stage-loving diva and her Harvard-grad lawyer girlfriend.
Rent is most famous for its thought-provoking anthem Seasons of Love (the song with the line “five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes”), but the entire soundtrack really is a masterpiece. Hidden in the lyrics are plentiful nuggets of the shrewd and satirical. So listen carefully.
Frequently throughout the score, the meaning of the musical’s title extends beyond its literal meaning as a monthly housing payment into the metaphorical. In a musical where four out of the seven main characters is HIV positive, they push the message that even life is a fleeting rental. They speak of a new lease on love and frequently harmonize to the musical’s resounding motto: No day but today.
Larson, who died of an aneurysm before his show ever hit Broadway, left behind music and lyrics that are rich in poetic tension: digital reality vs. actual reality. The creative space of the poor artist vs. gentrification. Us vs. them. And at the same time, the lines between male and female, love and friendship are blurred.
You don’t need to see Rent to ponder over poetic analysis, however. Rent will make you laugh. It will make you cry. It will make you moo. And it’s only in San Francisco for four more days.
This article appeared in the October 15, 2009 issue of Synapse.