Review: RENT: IN CONCERT at Strathmore

Yes, Rent opened on Broadway thirty years ago. Having seen its final preview with a rapt and frequently weeping audience, it was fun to share it with an audience that knows the score (and when to moo). The addition of orchestrations by Sean O'Loughlin creates a new and thrilling way to hear Jonathan Larson's Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning show. The 13 singers and 19 member band in this concert version make plenty of theatre with just music stands, chairs, a costume piece or three, a harp, an oboe, and a wig for Angel. Heidi Joosten conducts the excellent orchestra.

To depict the vie bohéme of the starving artists in 1996 Greenwich Village, Larson updated Puccini's opera (La Bohéme) of 1896. Instead of struggling with poverty and tuberculosis. Larson's characters struggle with drug addiction and HIV/AIDS. As was true on the left bank in Paris and in America (at the end of the millennium), power duets tell stories effectively and give great singers time to shine. Tommy Kaiser (Mark) and Candice Woods (Joanne) make “Tango Maureen” ironic fun. Ben Cherington (Roger) and Jasiana Caraballo (Mimi) start to realize their bond in “Another Day”--an anthem, ultimately, for the entire company; Cherington owes Larson a longer pre-show warm up, perhaps, to guarantee his intonation. Terrance Lamont (Tom Collins) and Kris Carrasco (Angel) bring the urgency of first love to “I'll Cover You.” And Woods and Alex Lugo (Maureen) bring the urgency of love in crisis to “Take Me or Leave Me.” Lugo's solo in Maureen's performance piece suitably stops the show, and so does Caraballo's number, “Out, Tonight.”

The trouble with high intensity sound systems is that they make all sound sound like all other sound. No composer writes that way; no musician plays that way; no human sings or speaks that way. Music and speech are dynamic and varied and capable of communicating emotion, feeling, ideas, nuance, more. This fine rendition of Rent is on tour with two “audio engineers” and one setting: LOUD.

Their next, two hour twenty minute performance is in Athens, OH, followed by Kalamazoo, Dallas, Florida, and beyond. Wherever this tour goes, there's no other path/no other way/no day but today.  Rent: In Concert was a one-night-only engagement at Music Center Strathmore.

(Photo by Michael Reinmiller)

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