Rent

By annie holub Catalyst

Send comments to: catalyst@wildcat.arizona.edu

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat

Actually, the "moon" doesn't really "shine"- there's a light inside of it, and it's hanging inside Centennial Hall - but that's theater for you. Surreal recreations of the real.

Jonathan Larson's "Rent," a modern-day adaptation of "La Boheme," is a rock musical that deals with the proverbial "life in the ninties": AIDS, homosexuality, homelessness, starving artists, and artistic exploitation, all to the beat of a live on-stage band, amplified keyboards, electric guitars and bass, and drums. The set is basically junk: shopping carts suspended from scaffolding, worn-out coats on hangers, t-shirts and trash cans lining the stage.

It's low-fi spectacular; "Rent" has so much surrounding it, it's almost more than just another Broadway musical.

Larson wrote "Rent" using his life and life as he saw it; instead of relying on historical information or stereotypes or ideologies, he wrote a musical about people who could be any combination of anyone you know. Everyday people as they are right now, thrown into this semi-exaggerated musical world, where answering machine messages are sung, yet hysterically familiar, where fantastic relationships begin romantically, with the lighting of a candle ... and yet the people involved have AIDS and are heroin junkies. "Rent" opened on February 13, 1996 at New York Theatre Workhop - just a couple weeks after Larson died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm.

"Rent" now has two North American touring companies, and companies in London, Australia, and Japan, making the "Rent" message worldwide. The "Benny" North American Tour Company is in Tucson this week for 8 shows at Centennial Hall; the last show is Sunday night.

Anika Larsen, who played Maureen opening night, sat on the leather couch in the Cyber Cafe at Club Congress Tuesday night at the cast party after the opening production of "Rent" at Centennial Hall here on campus. Behind her, the other cast members danced around the floor almost like they'd never left the stage. She looks like anyone you'd find at Congress, or at any club downtown for that matter, on any given night.

Maureen isn't on stage very often throughout "Rent" - "but when she's there you know she's there," said Larsen (LarSEN, not LarSON, like the writer of the musical).

The storyline is mapped out by relationships: there's Mark, who lives with Roger, and both of them used to live with Benny, who got married to wealthy and prominent Allison (who the audience never sees) and now owns the building Mark and Roger live in. Benny's turned money-hungry, and he wants his tenants to pay last year's rent asap or they're out on the streets. This little anouncement comes Christmas Eve, right before a protest for recent building closures planned by Maureen, who used to date Mark, is about to take place in a vacant lot nearby. While Maureen's current girlfriend Joanne is fumbling with the equipment, Collins (first name: Tom) is en route to visit his friends Roger and Mark. He meets Angel by a phone booth that night, and Roger meets Mimi when she knocks on his door asking for a light for her candle, since the electricity's gone out.

It's a hectic, freezing-cold Christmas Eve, and Benny's not too pleased about Maureen's protest. But the top-layer message in "Rent" is all about art: you can't mess with it, because in its rawest form, it relays its message best. Mark, Roger, Collins, Angel, Mimi, Maureen and Joanne are all trying to fight the power, whose name in this case is Benny; he represents the sell-out side of culture, making "Rent" a musical about not only staying true to yourself, but about staying true to what you know is real.

It's more than a struggle to pay rent - it's about having a place to live in to pay rent for. Not just a physical place, but an emotional one as well... "How do you measure a year in the life of?" asks "Seasons of Love"- through seasons of love is the answer.

"Rent" isn't really about anything concrete, just like how there isn't anything concrete in the lives of the characters, save their passion and their will to live, despite the downfalls and paper moons. It's just about life in the city - except there isn't any of this society-hollywood-shit that so often gets shoved down our throats. It's a rock musical about society's not-so-poetic problems. It sings about the struggle.

"I think "Rent" is doing a whole lot in terms of opening up people's minds and raising awareness and desensitizing people to stuff," said Larsen.

"'Rent' as a musical is different from what people consider as traditional musicals," she continued. "I think that people have a misconception that musicals have to be about nothing, they have to be about fluff and love and people will end up happy in the end."

"That's just not what it's about anymore, that's just not what interests people."

"We're the first generation that doesn't remember not having AIDS" explained Larsen. "It's appealing to us on that level - it's a whole lot more open in terms of racial and sexual issues."

Onstage Maureen, the charismatic "drama queen" (so-called by Collins), who delivered an incredible spoken word/song/poem/manifesto about surviving in cyberspace.

"The only thing to do is jump over the moon," she sang sweetly.

Maureen's just one of the many dynamic characters in the show, possible more so, becuase she really takes the stereotypes surrounding lesbians and, ahem, throws them over the moon.

"Rent" is what it's about.

"It's also the style it's in, too - it's a rock musical, it definitely appeals to a younger generation which I think is very important because it gets a new generation out to see musicals, out to see theater," Larsen explained.

Larsen told a story about the first time she saw "Rent," on Broadway,before she was a member of the cast: "(I was) walking out of the theatre behind an older white couple, and the husband said to the wife, 'You know who I reallly liked in that? My favorite was Tom Collins.' And I remember thinking to myself, wow. Tom Collins. A gay black man with AIDS in love with a Latino drag queen with AIDS. Just not the type of person that you would assume he'd identify with and yet somehow, during that night, he was won over, and fell in love with this character. And I thought, that's phenomenal. That's an incredible, incredible thing to do. And I think "Rent" is doing that."

"I think in the end what Rent does is it messes with your ideas, your stereotypes. You leave thinking of Tom Collins as a person, Angel as a person, whereas you might have gone in thining of him, seeing him only as a black man, seeing Angel only as a drag queen, seeing Joann only as a lesbian ...you leave thinking of them as just a cluster of people you've gotten to know in love in those two and a half hours."