RENT @ American Theatre Company

I’ve loved Rent for over a decade, but this production still offered a fresh, innovative, & much-appreciated insight; it surpassed the Broadway production. I largely credit this to the strong interaction & understanding of the text, both from an staging & performance perspective. The staging choices used ATC’s space in a startlingly effective manner, which was especially useful in scenes with overlapping settings that communicate critical plot-points. The timeline was definitely more definitively articulated; I never fully appreciated Larson’s structural choices in crafting the piece until stumbling upon a production that fully tapped into the text.  

The first act takes place on Christmas Eve; it is just one day, but one that is jam-packed with the aftermath of prior relationships, the butterflies of meeting a new love, & setting the stage for the mayhem of Act II. The first act should be & was used as an introduction to these individuals so that the audience will be invested in & acquainted with the events that will unfold for them in the following year. Act II opens a week later on New Year’s Eve & ends on the following Christmas eve (with Valentine‘s Day & Halloween serving as moments of punctuation); it was a fast-paced, electric, emotional roller coaster. The two acts together created an authentic circle of time & made the production’s tagline How Do You Measure a Year In a Life & the iconic sentiment of Seasons Of Love make a little more sense.  

Mark Schmuckler & Derrick Trumbly

This production was notably & fittingly more raw & gritty. Collin’s mugging actually seemed scary, there was a more biting meanness in the fights between friends, & the role of the homeless was more pronounced. The sense of social commentary seemed wider-spread than just the presence & permeating problem of HIV/AIDS. I never fully appreciated the difficult obligation to share one’s HIV positive status with potential partner; this struggle was always presented as a shadow of an idea in productions past, but I understood it more this time around. The contrast of Benny & Angel openly & immediately admitting their HIV-status versus Roger’s struggle with self-restraint in hiding it from Mimi was articulated & much appreciated.

As Mimi, Grace Gealey grew on me. She was hard to gauge during Light My Candle, but overall likeable; Out Tonight was not perfect. Despite good growls & a nice sense of pent-up energy, her solo spotlight moment was inconsistent & not entirely engaging. I began to love her performance during Christmas Bells; she stood out in the crowd & had an intrinsic charm that made it easy to see how Roger fell so fast & hard for her. I also liked that she had an awesome cropped hair-cut instead of the traditional long curls. She seemed like a 19 year-old girl & communicated the complications of youth, which is a rarity in this casting; she created a character from the text whose 19 year-old history you could actually envision. Without You was graceful, poignant, & the line goodbye love, hello disease could not have been more heartbreaking. Derrick Trumbly played a perfect partner in performance as Mimi’s Roger. He had that 1990’s flannel-clad, anguish-ridden, guitar-guy persona down pat; but he also acted through his singing with stunning subtlety & created a consistent, charismatic character independent of the love story dynamic. Tony Santiago played an excellent Benny; he didn’t play him as a flat, bad-guy character & it was easy to envision him as Roger & Mark’s former roommate/friend rather than the evil villain. As Roger’s current roommate Mark, Alan Schmuckler was good from the get-go & only improved exponentially. He was an introspective performer with a strong voice & equally strong narrative skills. Tango Maureen was never one of my favorite numbers, but this rendition was a smart, sassy performance that had little resemblance to prior, campier interpretations.

Aileen May 

As his tango partner Joanne, Lili-Anne Brown was flawless; her acting & singing was impeccable. Ms. Brown also directed Bailiwick’s 2011 production of Passing Strange, which was as flawless a production as her performance. Joanne’s other notable duet is Take Me For What I Am: her break-up song with Maureen (Aileen May)which was a number that  that erupted from history & a multi-faceted energy of frustration, pleading, and indignity (rather than the clashing of two big & clashing personalities). Aileen May was a stunning Maureen; her smart & quiet use of inflection was unparalleled. Over The Moon was strong, solid & her cow-head reminded me of Equus; it truly seemed like the heart-felt performance from the heart of a crazy artist. Speaking of the artist, I saw Angel’s understudy: Eduardo Placer. He was appropriately sweet, strong, stunning, & inspiring; I would imagine Angel is a difficult role to understudy & Mr. Placer did it so well. He created his own charm while simultaneously creating love-life with Collins, played by Alex Agard. I can’t say enough good things about Mr. Agard’s performance: he inspired, broke hearts, sang like an angel, & glorified a glorious role.


P.S. THE BAND WAS GREAT. Maybe it was because the prior productions I’ve seen of RENT were in Broadway-esque venues with an orchestra pit, maybe it was my seat’s close proximity to the band’s suspended studio, maybe it was that my youthful ears lacked fine-tuning…but this band created a more cohesive (and quality) sound than the orchestra pits of productions past. The band’s blare overpowered the singers at times, but they sounded so great that I didn’t find their dominance too offensive.