Rent: Live

I love that Fox wanted to tackle something as complex as RENT. The set, direction, art and costumes are all phenomenally done. The band is GREAT. But the casting of this musical...I just don't understand using "up and comers" who CANNOT sing over established stage vets who could rock the house down. Collins was amazing. Mark was great. Other than that...it's a hard pass from me on the cast. Valentina was AWFUL. Jesus. I get that she's "hot" right now, but she should not sing on stage. Can we get someone like Todrick? A guy who can pull off drag AND actually sing and dance. This was a valiant attempt at doing something strong and provoking, but it fell tragically flat

These TV musicals are always a little sketchy. I'm not a "Renthead" so I don't have much to go on. I saw the Broadway traveling company a few years ago and was quite captivated. Here, I felt the pacing was a bit slow. It is performed on an enormous stage, with the audience sitting in rectangular cells. This is a really touching story of the AIDS epidemic. It is about a sort of artists colony in a rental building. Many of the people there are HIV positive at a time when most would die from it. Others are drug users. Some are gay. They are all trying to survive. It is mixture of the angst that such a society would deal with, watching their young friends die off or lose their dreams. There is a nice moment at the end.

The live audience drowns out sections of the production. The were even moments that the camera focused on the audience which stops the storytelling cold. And it felt like theater in the round which I always find distracting. Other than that it was nicely done with some great performances.

My apologies to all my musical, thespian friends but I was not impressed. I'm trying to puzzle out whether it was RENT or RENT LIVE that fell flat for me. So, after giving it some thought I've concluded that RENT LIVE was a fish out of water and died in a frantic gasp when removed from the societal climate of the original. The original RENT would have been groundbreaking, centered around broke artists, straight and LBGTQ, in the midst of an AIDS epidemic, talking about L-O-O-O-V-E. RENT LIVE exists in a culture where creative rebellion is the new norm, AIDS is no longer a death sentence and being LBGTQ is no longer a novelty. I found the music of LIVE to be cacophonous and the vocal renderings to be shabby with the exception of Vanessa Hudgens and a few of the supporting cast. (Kudos to Hudgens for playing against type). This dissonance was underlined when the original cast performed as a curtain-call treat. Their tones and harmonies were just the opposite of what we had been hearing for 3 hours. They were clear, beautifully blended and spectacular (Idina Menzel and Jesse L. Martin were superb). I think the experience of being in the audience of this show in-the-round might have been more stirring than sitting on front of a TV. The rare moments, that did work for me, were the more intimate moments (like Light My Candle) but I felt they were soon flattened by the speeding freight train of chaos around them. Just a note about it's origin, the musical pulls from Puccini's La Bohème and Jonathan Larson's own life in Soho at the beginning of his writing career. Regretfully, I give RENT LIVE a 5 (a bit of a mess) out of 10. {Musical Theatre for TV}

So sad Jonathan Larson isn't around to give his input into the productions that followed his magnificent Broadway premiere but I think he still would be humbled to know that his play continues to resonate with so many people over 20 years later. Overall, not bad being mostly the taped dress rehearsal. Sets were a bit of a jumble but the acting and singing decent enough to keep our interest until that final tearjerking live reunion with the original Broadway cast which really made this memorable.