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HER VIEW by Marilyn King
After buying my ticket in the fall for the musical Rent, I had been waiting anxiously all school year for April 6 to finally be here. Then, this Friday, it actually happened: I got to put on my best pair of khakis and venture (it’s a five minute walk from my dorm) to the Wharton Center to watch the show. Our seats weren’t bad, even though we were in row V. The Wharton Center is set up so that pretty much any seat in the house is a good seat. I went with a group of friends who were also highly anticipating the show; one of my friends that went with us was in theater back in high school. The crowd caught me off guard a bit, however. Rent is based on the opera La Boheme (which is about bohemian life in Paris in the 1840s), and is a pretty risqué kind of musical, with many themes in it such as gay and lesbian relationships, suffering through HIV and AIDS, poverty and homelessness and drug addiction. Yet the crowd on Friday night was full of older people and parents. One thing about the crowd that didn’t really surprise me was the number of gay and lesbian couples. Gay and homosexual themes are a large part of what Rent is all about. The production of Rent that was at the Wharton center was the On Tour, traveling group brought to us by LLC. They called it “Broadway at Wharton Center.” Although it was a traveling production, it fell nothing short of my standards as a musical. I had not seen Rent on Broadway (I wish), but I had seen the movie of it, which came out last winter, several times. The actors and their singing were definitely up to par. Actress Tracy McDowell, who played main character Maureen, had a voice almost exactly like the character in the movie, making it enjoyable to listen to because it was so familiar. Similarly, Harley Jay, who played character Mark Cohen, fit the role extremely well. Declan Bennett, who played Roger, was a little different than I had hoped. I expected his voice to be more gruff and emotional, instead of smooth and resigned like it was in this production. Actress Jennifer Colby Talton lived up to the performance of Rosario Dawson in the movie production of Rent as character Mimi, an exotic dancer with a heroin addiction. Ano Okera was wonderful as Angel, a drag queen with a big heart. His dancing was superb as well. I would have liked the set to be a little more elaborate, but that is to be expected when you see a traveling show. The music and sound were great, the acting was wonderful, and I definitely shed a few tears along the way. If you are interested in seeing a show at the Wharton Center, I would definitely recommend getting your tickets early. My friends and I bought ours at a student price for $25 for Rent, but they shot up to as much as $55 a few days before the performance. (Click here for the Wharton online box office.) “La via Boheme!” |
HIS VIEW by Nathan Harris I’m not going to lie to save face; I wanted to see Rent. When I found it was going to be at the Wharton Center, and I could have what the school called a steak dinner along with my ticket for a low, low price, I couldn’t resist. So, I found myself first in the McDonel cafeteria for the dinner component of dinner-and-a-show, then working on the crossword puzzle in Noise with the deus ex-machina-ish aid of a lady in front of me. The show itself, though, does need me to mention the technical issues. There were some terribly muddy microphones; the vocals were sometimes incomprehensible and the mixing could have been better. I could, however, see what has made twenty-odd years of viewers love the show. The rock sensibilities of the music, the university-style liberalism and activism of the characters, the rock stars, documentary filmmakers, and philosophy professors of the cast make it an attractive mix. The story is roughly that of Puccini’s opera La Boheme, which I had seen. I spent most of the first act trying to find parallels: the poet became the washed-up rocker, the painter the filmmaker, and the seamstress a stripper. I was able to eventually sink into the show I was watching and enjoy it without comparison. Overall, the show was a musical workhorse, solid but not astounding, entertaining without being life-changing. I do have one major complaint: the girl that should have died did not. Mimi, the stripper/love-interest with a mercurial personality and a heart of gold, spent the show slowly dying of AIDS, but eventually did not. When it came down to it, she stumbled in weak and sick from the street, a doctor was called and she blacked out on the kitchen table, but she didn’t die! The cast learned to deal with death, they sang a song about it, her rock star boyfriend said goodbye, and she didn’t die! The show built up to what could have been a poetic climax, strung all the tension tight, and, like this review, ended abruptly and on a sour note.
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