'RENT' paid in full

Upon hearing the phrase "great American musical," it used to be that one's mind immediately went to Rodgers and Hammerstein shows, such as "South Pacific," or Frank Loesser's works, like "Guys and Dolls." These plays celebrated the happy-go-lucky idealisms of 1950s America. Guy meets girl, guy loses girl and of course, guy gets girl in the end. The audience wouldn't have it any other way.\nIn these modern times, however, the typical 20- and 30-something audiences are not satisfied with that. "My Fair Lady" may be fine for their parents and grandparents, but they cannot relate to the characters and the conflicts of the plot.\nThe late Jonathan Larson had a solution.\nIn a hand-written note from 1985 owned by the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation, Larson explicates his mission:\n"Although I am a sentimental romantic who loves old-fashioned musicals, I am a member of a very unsentimental unromantic generation, who basically thinks musicals are too corny ... But if I want to try to cultivate a new audience for musicals, I must write shows with a score that MTV ears will accept. If you were me, which audience would you write for?"\nAnd voila -- 11 years later, audiences in America, and around the globe, had a new theatrical sensation. "RENT."\nThe national off-Broadway tour of "RENT" visited the IU Auditorium Jan. 30 and 31.\nThe acting was superb. Brian Gligor, who played filmmaker Mark Cohen, said that his character was the unofficial narrator of the show.\n"Mark is a narrator," Gligor said. "The show is a documentary of the life of his friends. He has a tendency to detach himself as a defense mechanism from their problems."\nGligor can relate to his character. "I love my character because I know what it's like to be detached. [Like Mark], I learned to give into my emotions. It is a much better way of dealing with things."\nIn fact, that is the main theme of the show. Through songs like "Seasons of Love," "Another Day" and "What you Own," Gligor realizes the show's message. "There is no day like today. Spend your moments loving and living it as if it were your last. I believe in it. It is hard not to when you are out touring the country all the time."\nGligor's character lives in the loft with Roger Davis, an HIV-positive, brooding musician. Their close friend and former roommate Tom Collins is a brilliant ex-Massachusetts Institute of Technology student who can hotwire ATMs to dispense free cash to anyone who can type in a specific password.\nMarcus Paul James, the actor who portrays Collins, probably had the most impressive vocal range in the show. His booming baritone and crystal-clear enunciation seemed comfortable singing anything, be it "I'll Cover You" from the show or "Old Man River" from "Showboat." He could certainly belt it out at one moment and sing as gently as a bard underneath a willow tree the next.\nUnfortunately, the music was not smooth all the way through. Jaime Lee Kirchner, who played Roger's girlfriend, the cocaine-addicted Mimi, sang her songs with a forced, raucous alto. Perhaps it was an interpretation of her character, a fun-loving dancer who just wants to have a good time and live in the moment. Kirchner is a wonderful actress, and beautiful, but when she sang her song "Out Tonight," her voice sounded strained and unable to hit some of the high notes the song demanded.\nGligor expressed -- and this reporter agrees -- that the direction the show was given was expert. \n"We have the original Broadway director (Michael Greif) who worked with Jonathan Larson, and members of Jonathan's family helped our production be true to his original message," he said. "It could easily turn into a rock concert and be all about the music."\nThe set was, succinctly described, an urban jungle. The story took place in an industrial loft, and the set -- with its high cement staircases, metal folding chairs and tables and smoky lighting -- gave off a cold, uncomfortable feel. The thought that went through the mind of Johnny Audience-member was, "People are supposed to live there?"\nAs an industrial loft may be utilitarian in its ability to serve many functions, the set was multi-purpose as well. The live band had an alcove upstage right (that's back-left to the audience), and the stage served as the inside of the loft and the alley out back where a "tent city" of homeless people has congregated.\nBecause of the utilitarian feel of the set, there were three metal tables that were used for many different things: a long banquet table, beds and the kitchen table of the loft. Although the thin metal tables looked rickety and tipsy on the thin metal legs, that's the magic of the stage. Characters were dancing and jumping around on the tabletops, and they didn't wobble at all.\nThe most impressive technical aspect of the show was the lighting. The spotlight operator must be commended: he or she, on numerous occasions, was able to aim a very narrowly-focused follow spot on an actor's face or on a telephone as it was ringing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish without being able to take time to aim first.\nLarson's original message of the show was clear. Jim Nicola, the artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop (where Larson developed the original production of "RENT"), asked Larson to write a one-sentence plot summary. After painstaking revisions of complex sentences, he summed it up into this: "RENT is about a community celebrating life, in the face of death and AIDS, at the turn of the century."\nLarson's "live for the moment" mantra suited his life and death well. Because of an undiagnosed aortic aneurysm, Larson collapsed on his kitchen floor on the night of his preview performance and died instantly.\nAlthough not necessarily rhyming all the time, the rhythm of Larson's lyrics rung out through the auditorium. He brought the very real threat of AIDS, cocaine and homelessness into a mass of comparatively privileged theatergoers. Yet the same time he took all of this awfulness, wrapped it up into a bittersweet story of hope and made it sound poetic at the same time.\nFew people can do that. Were Larson alive today, he would have finished paying his rent long ago.