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WPCNR View from the Balcony. Minute Review by John F. Bailey. June 26, 2008: Rent, the Pulitzer Prize Tony-touting operetta of the streetpeople that focused national attention on AIDS and the homeless in the mid-nineties written by White Plains High School graduate Jonathan Larson played at the Stamford Palace Theater this week. The operetta still makes you walk out feeling like you want to do good!
This Rent is powerful, exuberant, uplifting, gripping and downright everything theater is supposed to be. It is the work of a lifetime in the very short life of White Plains High Hall of Fame writer, Jonathan Larson, who wrote the book, the music and the lyrics. You got to see this book, lyrics and music performed. Recalling Jesus Christ Superstar in pace, message and listenability, the work is amazing.
Being that today is HIV Testing day — Rent’s appearance this week was very timely — for it is the musical that cries out to your compassion.
About 1,200 folks saw the Networks national tour production Tuesday evening in the grand old vaudeville house, the Palace on Atlantic Street in the crisp new Stamford downtown. Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. Stamford loved this show, cascading applause for 3 minutes . No wonder. It is staged by a high octane relentlessly energetic cast of appealing actors and actresses putting across the sublime to the pathos with reality that hurts, empathizes and teaches in the course of a 2 hour and 45 minute evening that never lets you off the emotional hook – from its mother phone jokes, its answering machine fascination, its humor, raw sensuality, romantic blunders, fantastic dancing and evocative renderings of the suffering ill and the disdained homeless, the inevitability of loss, and the answer to it: love.
Roger Davis played by Heinz Winckler and his pal Mark Cohen, played by Jed Resnick are the odd couple in this play, both “struggling artists.” Roger has AIDS, and his friend Mark, a media artist who films everything with a Super-8 camera (I knew people like this who did that). They are being threatened with eviction from their Avenue W loft by their former roommate, Benny, who wants to build a studio on the site. The dilemma is hilariously rendered by the company singing Rent (“We’re not gonna pay”).
Winckler stumming a Fender guitar, coming to grips with his fate singing One Song Glory, wanting to write one great song before he dies. This will resonate with every person struggling to get the most out of his talent. One by one, you meet the stories of these street artists, prostitutes, addicts, pushers, and persons down on their luck to discover they have emotions, too.
Roger meets Mimi (seductive with a heart of gold) played by Jennifer Colby Talton whose terrific entrance makes her hard to resist, singing “Light My Candle” She and Roger become an item only to be torn apart by Roger’s obsession to open a restaurant in Santa Fe.
There is Angel, charismatically created by Kristen-Alexzander Griffith, whose unbelievably lithe and energetic dancing blockbuster intro number, Today 4 U is over the top spectacular. Griffith, enacting the last throes of what it is like to die of AIDS, delivers one of the most moving death scenes you will see, and reminds you that AIDS (or being homeless) isn’t just a cause, it hurts, it wounds, it kills. People who have it hurt. They were people once and still are.
Christine Dwyer as Maureen, Mark’s former girl friend, has taken up with Joanne, the dynamic Onyie Nwachukwu, are the other odd couple, getting together and breaking apart over personality conflicts throughout the play. Ms. Nwachukwu’s duet with Mr. Resnick on the Tango Maureen in which Maureen’s ability to dangle a lover on a string is defined, is a highlight of the show. Ms. Dwyer’s protest performance at a club to prevent the homeless from being chased out of the adjacent lot is something to see – the audience was even coaxed into “mooing” with her. To see what I mean, see the show tonight.
The second act, taking place on New Year’s eve, highlights the two songs that were popularized from this show, Seasons of Love, perhaps the heaviest message song ever (565,000 minutes is the line you probably know it as), and of course the most sentimental song in the show — Your Eyes. The audience is so hushed when the two lovers sing this to each other, Mr. Winckler and Ms. Talton, play this beauty for all it gives.
The Orchester under the keyboardist extraordinaire Jeremy Randle who makes that Yamaha, Hammond or whatever keyboard it is, sing. The music sometimes overrides the singing, but you get it, you get it. Great beats, unique riffs, satires of basic rock anthems all come off with a beat and you can dance to it.
Rent is all about hurt and how we can choose to hurt or to help make each other better and reminds us it is always our choice to do one or the other. Those who make decisions about the homeless and the ill, should see this play before they make any politically correct decisions and do the wrong thing.
