Theatre in Review: Rent (New World Stages)

	Matthew Shingledecker. Photo: Joan Marcus

We've barely had time to miss it, but Rent is back, taking advantage of the new economic law of the theatre that says long-run Broadway shows can downsize to take advantage of Off Broadway contracts. In this scenario, New World Stages, the Off Broadway multiplex, has become a kind of retirement home where old musicals can spend their sunset years. However, Rent is different from such other New World Stages tenants as Avenue Q and Million Dollar Quartet, which moved in directly from Broadway; it has been closed for three years, and although this edition retains its original director, Michael Greif, it has been rethought for a more intimate presentation, complete with a new design approach and some fresh staging ideas.

How does Rent fare in its new down-market digs? It's certainly looking good after all these years. Mark Wendland's new setting is a two-level assemblage of fire escapes, rabbit-warren hallways, rolldown store gates, and leaded windows, adding up to an accurately forbidding portrait of the Lower East Side of two decades ago. Kevin Adams' lighting suffuses the action with bursts of saturated color and festoons the stage with clusters of light bulbs, an appropriate choice for a show that begins and ends on successive Christmas Eves. Peter Nigrini's projections add images of tent cities, streetscapes, and trash television. Angela Wendt's ragbag of costumes is as on the money as it ever was.

If the overall effect of this new Rent is a tad muted, it's partly because of an uneven cast and partly because of circumstances beyond anyone's control. For reasons that are nobody's fault, it's impossible to retrieve the excitement of those early days of 1995 when Rent announced the debut - and farewell -of the stunningly talented Jonathan Larson. His daring transposition of La Bohème to the '80s New York of squatter apartments, performance artists, and tent cities seemed to usher in a new era of musical theatre. Seeing the current production, it's impossible not to regret the loss of Larson, an accomplished melodist with an instinctive dramatic sense. And, after all these years, Rent remains a deeply moving cascade of music -- arias, duets, and complex choral numbers -- that vividly recall the now-gone downtown avant-garde of 25 years go. It's all there, the grit and grime, the people sleeping in the streets, the creeping horror of AIDS, the influx of real estate speculators, and the defiantly self-assertive artists who bet their lives on the proposition that there was a better way beyond the corrupting pleasures of a bourgeois existence. Larson wrote glorious music, but he always thought like a dramatist. Consider the first-act finale, "La Vie Bohème," in which the entire company takes over the Life Café for a rowdy celebration of Sontag, Sondheim, sodomy and other outlaw pleasures. It's a classic list song, cleverly set to a maddeningly catchy beat -- but it also has a solid dramatic context: all the roughhousing is designed to embarrass the character of Benny, formerly a member of the in crowd and now a would-be real estate magnate who is dining with one of his conservative investors. In addition, Larson weaves a number of musical-dramatic sequences in and out of the song, filling us in on the state of several relationships. A hugely complex achievement-it's exhilarating even as it leaves you sadly wondering what Larson might have achieved had he lived.

A really stellar cast might have upped the electricity level, but Rent's current tenants are more proficient than thrilling; they get the job done, but in many cases the work lacks the life-or-death intensity on which the show feeds. One of the best contributions comes from Adam Chanler-Berat as Mark, an aspiring filmmaker and our de facto narrator. He's both geeky and impassioned, with a sense of irony wrapped around a bleeding heart, the kind of guy who is able to identify his friends' faults while flying blind about his own foibles. Chanler-Berat scores as the ringleader of "La Vie Bohème" and in the impassioned second-act number "What You Own," in which he confronts his own willingness to sell his talent out for money. Equally fine is Annaleigh Ashford as Mark's ex, the dizzily self-involved bisexual performance artist, Maureen. Without ever referencing the work of Idina Menzel, who created the role, Ashford turns Maureen's anti-capitalist performance piece into a devastating spoof of the kind of shenanigans that once filled the theatres at places like PS 122. Similarly, Ben Thompson brings a highly welcome bit of diva attitude to the role of Angel, the ailing drag queen who, all too often, holds this fractious group of friends together.

Others in the cast need time to win us over. As Roger, Mark's roommate, dogged by depression and the HIV virus, Matthew Shingledecker lacks presence at first, but his singing is powerfully seductive and his performance gains some much-needed tenderness in the second act. More problematic is the Mimi of Arianda Fernandez, who is strikingly lacking in vulnerability, and who struggles vocally at times. Her rendition of Mimi's painting-the-town-red aria, "Out Tonight," is the evening's single most disappointing performance. She has strong chemistry with Shingledecker, however, and together they make Roger and Mimi's wounded romantic sparring thoroughly believable; also, her singing improves in the second act's more intimate passages. As Tom Collins, the computer-age philosopher who presides over the group, Nicholas Christopher is younger and less avuncular than Jesse L. Martin was in the original -- which would be all right if Christopher had more presence and more chemistry with Thompson's Angel. As Joanne, Maureen's hapless, frantic girlfriend, Corbin Reid lacks presence, humor, and clear diction. Ephraim Sykes makes a rather bland Benny -- admittedly the least well-developed role in the show.

There are occasional staging missteps as well. Larry Kegwin's choreography is a big improvement over the original of Marlies Yearby, but some numbers are overstaged -- when Angel and Tom Collins are singing their touching ballad "I'll Cover You," it's made faintly ridiculous by the chorus of street people leaping about the stage. And, since the show makes crystal clear that Maureen's performances are staged on a shoestring, it makes no sense at all to add a sophisticated projection element to this sequence, just because you have a talent like Peter Nigrini on the payroll. Brian Ronan's sound design doesn't strike an ideal balance between actors and musicians; some vocals -- most crucially during key recitative passages -- are lost.

And yet, there's no question that Rent, even when less than ideally performed, has an irresistible power as its characters struggle to carve out meaningful lives in the face of poverty, gentrification, and devastating illness -- not to mention the stifling conformity of America during the first George Bush administration. Larson was a big talent with a big heart -- a combination that comes along much too rarely. It's become a little bit fashionable to dismiss his only Broadway musical as being too slick and sentimental -- but it remains a remarkable achievement, a promissory note that, heartbreakingly, could never be redeemed.

It's an interesting experience seeing Hair and Rent -- Broadway's two classic youth musicals -- within a few weeks of each other. Hair has its score of pop classics, but, in other respects, its reputation is a bit hard to credit. Repeated viewings only serve to highlight the book's chaotic qualities -- and, rather than enshrining the youth movement of the '60s, it tends to make the entire flower-power era look like a massive exercise in magical thinking. In contrast, the elemental conflicts of Rent, set against a ruthlessly changing New York City, make for a far more universal piece. So even if this time out it's not perfect -- it's still good to have it back.--David Barbour