I suspect no theatrical emotion will ever be purer than the feelings you have for a musical you love. Perhaps you missed the musical boat. "I hate musicals," you sneer. I sort of believe you. In that I see all the reasons why one should, and yet have some trouble believing anyone actually could. While my sensibility may in fact be the zealousness of an over-enthusiastic twelve-year-old, I know I'm not a partisan. I wouldn't say OBCRs occupy a large (or even substantive) portion of my listening diet, but there are certain showtunes so deep in my marrow they couldn't be surgically extracted.
So even though Othello and Henry IV Pt. 1 and Harlem Duet and Arcadia are definitely the plays that I consider the gods of my idolatry and use as beacons in my adulthood's consideration of and appreciation for live drama and more broadly of the miracles of art, I also know no piece of theatre will ever mean more to me than Rent. "Give me the child when he is twelve years old," someone probably said, "and I will give him a passion for a musical he happened to discover in CD form at his Grandma's house and he'll never be able to escape its big-hearted, gravitational pull," they probably added.
The Stratford Festival's production of Rent directed by Thom Allison drives the story's engine as sturdily as one could imagine. The ensemble serves the piece uniformly well, with no individual performance towering over or crouching beneath any other. The Puccini-inspired tale of Bohemians living in Alphabet City in the '90s is primarily and enjoyably an opportunity for us to spend time with the artists and addicts and survivors who populate the world of Jonathan Larsen's 1996 rock-operetta. Especially in the second half, the action gets more scattered, and one wonders how it might have developed had Larsen not died so tragically young (he's the closest thing theatre has to a Buddy Holly). But Allison's production moves sturdily along, and serves up the flavorings of Rent with confident sentiment.
Though really, I don't believe most people's experience of Rent has much to do with Script Etiquette 101. Dramaturgical niceties matter little in the world of Mark and Roger and Mimi and Collins and Angel and Joanne and Maureen. While the scoffer will find much to roll their eyes at in Larsen's blindingly earnest morality play, the deep-rooted passion on display in numerous songs still has the power to shake you to your core, as you listen to lyrics like "all the scars from the nevers and maybes" or "how do you leave the past behind when it keeps finding ways to get to your heart" or "we'll open up a restaurant in Santa Fe" and are left with no alternative than to ask "how did he know that?" Seriously, how did this relatively young composer have such bitter and hard-won wisdom and yet remain so wide-eyed and hopeful and not in a gaggy way but in an infectious way that had the power to leave audiences themselves wanting to be more like him at the end of watching his show? The alchemy is powerful when you both want to make the world a better place with your art and actually succeed, which Larsen did and does.
I write these words from a hotel room in Stratford, Ontario, in a hotel I first stayed at about 15 years ago. I've read many great Canadian plays here, regrouped after seeing stellar and otherwise Festival productions, and have a distinct memory of staying up late to read Miss Julie because I didn't want to arrive at freshman orientation and be caught never having read any Strindberg (a downy lad I was, and twee). There's nothing wrong with having places of your life in such immediate proximity to plays of your life. Thankfully, Allison's production of the show gives no former Renthead cause for despair, or any application of revisionist history: it is loving and loveable.
My love for Rent is, in the words of Leonard Cohen, "stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay." I doubt I'll ever relinquish my passion. Rent is a childhood friend whom you may not see for years but within a few sentences are immediately who you were back when you were still finding your heroes. Knowing such pieces are out there is comforting; they quite literally never die.
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