Rent

"Rent," which since it opened in 1996 has played to sold-out houses and garnered such awards as the Pulitzer Prize, is now on the road. The musical is now in its temporary home in Chicago, but the show I viewed was one of the last in Washington D.C. I had been hearing so much about the show that I was thrilled when I had the opportunity to see for myself what all the fuss is about. At the National Theater in Washington, the house was predictably packed.

The set is minimal, which is apparently one of the two options currently available to the Broadway community (the other being to pour an obscene amount of money into mechanized sets and cool effects a la "Beauty and the Beast"). A few stainless-steel tables, some folding chairs, several piles of trash, some lengths of chain-link fence and an on-stage seating arrangement for the orchestra comprised most of the setting. There were, of course, two levels for cast members to clamber up and down, but otherwise there were few clues to the world the actors would soon enter.

When the cast did enter, they quickly took control of the stage and if they didn't exactly set the scene for the audience, they sang so well and with such passion that little questions like, "where the heck ARE we?" seemed unimportant for the moment. The company's opening number, "Rent," was not so much sung as thrown at the audience, energetically and almost violently.

This was to be the tone for the rest of Act I: there were a bunch of characters, all of whom were desperately angry and disillusioned, and the majority of whom carried in their bodies the deadly virus that has become the martyr-maker of the 80's and 90's: AIDS. The complicated and, at first listen, incomprehensible plot deals with the lives of a group of Gen-Xers in New York. Many of them idealistic artists (Mark the filmmaker, Roger the musician, Collins the philosopher, Maureen the performance artist), they banded together to thwart the plans of the evil Benny, formerly one of their own and now sucked into the dark side of capitalism. Benny, who has married into ownership of the apartment building in which Mark and Roger are living, plans to evict them and the homeless people living in the lot next door so the building can make way for a cyber-arts studio. In a splendid display of hard-hearted business sense, he decides to do so on (cliche alert!) Christmas Eve. Maureen, Mark's former girlfriend, performance artist and lesbian, determines to stage a performance piece in the lot in protest of Benny's actions, which conveniently provides the filmmaker Mark with something to tape and leads to a riot. Act I ends with a joyful celebration of the Bohemian lifestyle in "La Vie Boheme."

The voices of the cast were simply incredible throughout. Most of the performers had voices that found no trouble soaring up to the balcony. The lyrics were occasionally drowned out by the orchestra's very loud rock (you know the volume that reaches into your chest and makes your sternum vibrate? That loud), especially the words of Tom Collins (C. C. Brown) and Benny (James Rich). Words were sacrificed for the sake of synthesizers, and I honestly can't decide if it would have been better to hear their words or not. After all, is there any other way to really listen to rock? Not really. Is this any way to treat characters in a musical? Again, not really. I suppose it was a trade-off that had to be made, but I'm not sure it helped the audience empathize with the characters, or even know who they were.

Act I explored, in its combination of anger and desperation, the few days between Christmas Eve and the celebration of the new year, while the quieter, more peaceful Act II covered the entire following year. The characters did suffer the loss of one of their number, and a sort of sad dignity settled over the stage. With songs such as "Seasons of Love" asking the question "How do you measure the life of a woman or a man?" the characters broke apart from their closely knit group and pursued their own interests. I could tell you how the whole thing ends, but that would take the fun out of it entirely.

I know this musical has been a huge success. I saw with my own eyes the "Rent-heads" camped outside waiting for cancellations so they could get into the sold-out show. I saw the enthusiastic reactions of the first few rows of the theater, clearly composed of people who had been to see this musical more than once. My only question is, why?

True, the music was fresh and exciting and it was well-sung and well-played. The plot, however, was (dare I suggest it?) tired. The characters pursue a lifestyle that, while it offers great freedoms in one sense, leads to misunderstanding in the best-case scenario and death in the worst. They struggle for their art, for "connection in an isolating age," for freedom from the norm, and they pay the price in heartache and even disease. The idea of a Bohemian lifestyle has been done before, and it's been done better. The hippies of the 60's are a good example, and they even had a musical equivalent in "Hair."

I liked the music, I loved the voices of the cast, but that only means that I should have bought the soundtrack. The plot which so many are hailing as revolutionary is in fact just a bit stale, and the real tragedy of "Rent" is that it's being billed as a strong, reality based play when its characters are dwelling in as much of a fairy tale as Peter Pan ever could.