Village people

Rent: pathos with a happy face

by Bill Rodriguez

RENT. Book, music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson. Directed by Michael Greif. With Cary Shields, Saycon Sengbloh, Matt Caplan, Horace V. Rogers, Stu James, Raquel Roberts, Shaun Earl, and Michelle Joan Smith. At Providence Performing Arts Center through February 13.

Ever since Tommy's pinball wizard hit the road in 1970, Broadway has been playing with the possibilities of rock opera. A certain venerable Superstar notwithstanding, the 1996 Pulitzer and Tony winner Rent most successfully merged the operatic with a backbeat, as the current Providence Performing Arts Center touring production certainly demonstrates.

It may be Puccini-lite, as it retreads the pathos of La Bohème, but it gets from tempo to tears with a minimum of fuss and makes the plot miles fly by. The most sustained evening of high-energy song in modern musical theater flew out of the pen of Jonathan Larson, who did the book, lyrics and music. It didn't hurt the melodrama of the occasion when the creative genius died of an aortic aneurysm at age 35 on the last night of dress rehearsals for the off-Broadway opening.

The turn-of-the-century bohemians are now poor East Village artists, and the consumption that consumes Mimi is, of course, AIDS instead of TB. La Bohème was scorned as fluff by some critics in 1896, but at the turn of the next century audiences weren't even put through Mimi's death at the final curtain. Rent ends on an upbeat note, with her reviving. She is still fatally ill and in this version shares her ultimate off-stage fate not only with her lover (Rudolfo is now Roger), but with other friends. We do get the pathos of one character dying, but by and large instead of catharsis we experience optimistic, happy-face suffering.

The set is one big space, with a brick wall at the back, metal scaffolding and musicians covering the stage; solos and intimate moods are established by side lighting or spots selecting faces. We are in the cold-water tenement of a landlord who used to be one of them, but the poor roommate married well. Benny (Stu James) wants them out of his building so he can turn it into a commercial enterprise, hence the title and the sword of eviction dangling over their heads.

As in the original opera, recent downstairs neighbor Mimi (Saycon Sengbloh) meets Roger (Cary Shields) when she comes up for a match to light her candle, symbology even this downbeat rocker can appreciate. Unfortunately, Sengbloh plays Mimi one-dimensionally, merely struttin' her stuff, coming on big-time. Our empathy with the couple is built on this meeting, so other productions have taken pains to give us a Mimi who is vulnerable as well as flirtatious, someone who uses her sex appeal and brazen talk as a shield. As she's portrayed here, all we can see in the sensitive songwriter/poet Roger's attraction to her is lust -- understandable but banal.

Fortunately, there is plenty to distract us. Roger's roommate Mark (Matt Caplan) is a filmmaker who narrates the tale as he records it for posterity. There is the tender love story of computer wiz Collins (Horace V. Rogers) and drag queen Angel (Shaun Earl), who takes him in after he's mugged. There is the organized and efficient Joanne (Raquel Roberts), whose scatterbrained new girlfriend Maureen (Michelle Joan Smith) used to be Mark's lover. Maureen is planning a performance art piece as a fund-raiser in the homeless-occupied vacant lot next to the tenement. Benny tries to bribe Roger and Mark with free rent if they can get her to call off the accompanying demonstration.

The principals are all in fine voice, and though the several Rent road companies make a point of spotlighting unknown talent, talented these performers certainly are. As Roger, Shields maintains a convincing balance of sadness and vivacity. Caplan grabs our interest as well as attention every time Mark continues the narration, and Earl is sweet and properly outrageous as the cross-dressing Angel.

And then there are the songs. You can enter this story anywhere and be caught up in the lyrics and music, dense with images, throbbing with rhythms. Besides the pulsing title song, my favorites include the comical "Tango: Maureen," with her two lovers listing her exasperating ways. And then there's "Another Day," where we get some of the approach-avoidance complexity we need to see in Roger and Mimi's relationship. And you won't forget "La Vie Bohème," as clever and persuasive a manifesto as ever set to music, or "One Song Glory," Roger's poignant lament about wanting to leave something behind.

The real heartbreak is that not only was Jonathan Larson not around to witness his show's triumph, but he is no longer here to give us more. Perhaps some budding multi-talented prodigy is tapping his or her toe right now, writing a rock opera about that story. Give it a few years, and with any luck it'll come to PPAC.