Rent – Review 2023 Stratford Festival Production

First, let me recognize the achievements of the late Jonathan Larson, the composer of Rent which is now playing at the Stratford Festival. He won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Richard Rodgers Award, all of them for Rent. And that’s just a short list of the recognitions that he received prior to his untimely death at age 35.
The opening night audience of Rent at the Stratford Festival received the production with enthusiasm demonstrated sounds of approval that reverberated throughout the evening. Opening night audiences are not always a reliable measurement of a show’s appeal but I could not doubt the passion and thrill that they greeted every song, every movement and everything imaginable in a performance. They sounded like a theater full of young people that were thoroughly familiar with the work and pumped up and ready to applaud, yell, and make every noise to indicate approval and, I say it again, enthusiasm.
I step into the confessional and admit my maxima culpa and seek absolution for my unfavorable reaction to the rock musical. The problem is with the chromocomposition of my deoxyribonucleic acid, an unchangeable and incurable part of me that prevents me from enjoying most rock music. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Rent bears some relationship to Puccini’s La Bohème, familiar territory that I hoped would let me enjoy Larson’s work. Starving artists in a cold attic in Manhattan is just like the opening events in La Bohème. Larson’s people are far more colourful than anything Puccini included but we accept the modern  premise. We can follow Mimi (a spitfire Andrea Macasaet) going into Roger’s (Kolton Stewart) apartment, her candle being blown out and she and Roger falling in love. Well, Larson’s Mimi drops her stash of dope and Roger tries to steal it, but let’s not get worked up about details.
Director Thom Allison tells us what type of people we have in Rent and I quote him. “The characters in this show are artists, exotic dancers, independent filmmakers, rock singers, anarchist professors, drug addicts, gay people, people of colour, the unhoused, drag queens.” And he adds that several of the characters have HIV/AIDS. That is a frightful array of people who, according to Allison, “were not welcomed into polite society.” I think some of them were treated almost like lepers.
The cast list names twenty performers including three swings and they made it seem like many times more. But who was what according to Allison’s list, with some exceptions, is beyond me.   We move a long way from Puccini but we maintain our composure as we listen to some, well, a lot of ensemble singing. The problem is we cannot make out the lyrics. Some sing at the top of their lungs and we wonder what if any voice they will have left at the end of the evening let alone the run. Maybe it’s the heavy-duty mikes that make them sound louder than  they really are, but the nagging thought remains.
The real issue is not the fate of the voices but the fact that we do not understand what in the world they are saying/singing or where the plot is exactly going. Yes, some points are clear and the end is like the closing scene of La Bohème but that is not enough.
I realize that the performers and artistic crew deserve attention and credit but my overall reaction makes it clear that they would not want to hear from me. Fair enough.
I may have been the only one in the theatre that did not understand everything that was said, sung or hinted and did not react with excitement. The audience knew every word and every nuance of what was happening and they responded with utter elation before it even happened. The Stratford Festival found all the aficionados of Rent and did not need to be concerned about an ignoramus with inbred defects like moi.
Rent by Jonathan Larson opened on June 2 and continues until October 28, 2023, at the Festival Theatre, Stratford, Ontario www.stratfordfestival.ca

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