✭Matinée Wednesday: Round Eleven…
I really wanted to like Rent. I did. There was a sort of hometown pride I felt towards the show, as it was written by Jonathan Larson, a graduate of Adelphi University in Garden City. I love the music; the show is full of memorable songs. Yet, I did not feel a connection to the show. As many know, the story is based on Puccini’s La bohème, and is set in the early 1990s, during the recognition of the AIDS pandemic.
While the original version offers a truly touching and moving story, I felt that Rent cheapened it and told it crassly. I mean, what are you supposed to think as two of the characters mime cunnilingus on stage? (Whilst sitting next to you mother, none the less!!!) That was a little too raunchy — even for me.
Over the course of the show’s 12 year run, the cast boasted several big names, that ranged from Taye Diggs and Idina Menzel to Joey Fatone and Mel B. Unfortunately, the performance I saw in the Summer of ‘07 featured a rather lackluster group. By the time I went, the production seemed tired.
