‘Rent’ shares love in a torn world
In a note for an early draft of what would become “Rent,” Jonathan Larson wrote that “art is about love.”
Those words were very much on my mind at the Marcus Center Tuesday night, as a touring production of “Rent” drove home what Mark sings just before intermission: “the opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation.”
Coming just 48 hours after the nightmare in Las Vegas, the seasons of love featured in Larson’s rock operetta were both resounding confirmation of why art matters and an urgent plea to heed this show’s reminder: there’s only now and only here – no day but today and a choice to live in love or fear.
It’s a tribute to Larson’s score that all this came through despite the substandard quality of this production, involving a young and inexperienced nonunion cast that has more energy than understanding of what they’re singing and why it matters. And yes: this 15-actor cast can sing. But for all the feeling many of them bring to what they’re doing, they might as well lip-sync.
As Roger, for example, Kaleb Wells continually confuses volume with emotion; the song he writes for Mimi is an amped wail rather than a tender whisper. Skyler Volpe has little of the vulnerability Mimi needs, and she’s missed choreographer Marlies Yearby’s spot-on memo from all those years ago: “Mimi needs a celebration in her sensuality rather than her raunchiness.”
It didn’t help this overmatched cast that they were coping with some of the muddiest acoustics I’ve encountered in Uihlein Hall in a long time. Some patrons left at intermission, grumbling that they couldn’t understand the lyrics; others came up to me and complained.
If you’re not among the Rentheads who know this score cold – guilty – you’d have been lost during the big numbers. Truth be told, “Rent” fares better in smaller spaces like the East Village theater where it was born – or the Cabot Theatre, where Skylight Music Theatre staged “Rent” in 2010.
One gets glimpses of what should have been, particularly from the relationship between Aaron Harrington’s Collins and Aaron Alcaraz’s Angel, covering each other in their thousand sweet kisses and the rest of us in balm as they channel their own brief season of love at the height of the AIDS crisis.
More than Maureen’s antics or Mark’s anthems, what hit home for me Tuesday night was the AIDS support group attended by Collins and Angel, each of them bravely singing their insistence on living rather than dying.
AIDS may not be the raging pandemic it once was. But in a world consumed by so much hate and death, we’ve never more needed the light and love from Larson’s candle. It glows as brightly as ever, filling our dark night with hope.