Love story

Rent's musical lessons in survival

by Johnette Rodriguez

RENT. By Jonathan Larson. Choreography by Marlies Yearby. Costumes by Angela Wendy. Lighting by Blake Burba. Set design by Paul Clay. With Monique Daniels, D'Monroe, Mark Leroy Jackson, Kirk McDonald, Adrian Lewis Morgan, Julia Santana, and Andy Senor. At the Providence Performing Arts Center through June 14.

If songs from Cats and Les Miz creep unwittingly into your brain, you've been exposed (or overexposed) in the past decades to what has come to be known as "rock opera." And although there have been less literary examples than Eliot and Hugo -- Tommy and Hair spring to mind -- they do not touch the artistic accomplishment of Rent. Like Sondheim's West Side Story, it takes its framework and basic story from a classic (Puccini's 1896 La Boheme); like Hair, it springs from the energy and social concerns of its time.

Rent's creator Jonathan Larson quite literally wrote his heart out for this play (he died of an aortic aneurysm the day before the first preview performance). He saw his life and that of his friends in the East Village reflected in the struggling Left Bank artists of Puccini; the young people in 19th-century Paris dying from consumption as the friends around him who were dying of AIDS.

Larson took the down-and-dirty street life around him -- addiction, prostitution, homelessness -- and put it into a story of great love and community. In the love affairs he writes about -- between HIV-positive hetereosexuals, between lesbians and gay men -- and in the friendships that bind them all, there is a renewed sense of the kinship people can find and the "families" they can form, when they care about each other.

That kind of '60s love-peace-and-good-vibes stuff was swept under the rug by the mid-'70s, ignored in the booming '80s and scorned in the welfare-for-the-rich '90s. But, like other endangered species, there have been pockets of survival: in the support that recovery group members give each other; in the care and loyalty of gay men for each other throughout the AIDS epidemic; in the bonds formed among "street people" -- homeless individuals, sex workers and social action protesters.

Rent's signature song, "Seasons of Love," answers its own question of how you define a year's worth of memories -- in "525,600 minutes?" The 15-member cast, lined up Hair-style across the front of the stage at the beginning of the second act, rejects that simplistic capsule and sings out: "How about love?" That number is built around a pop chant that's as infectious as anything written for musical theater.

But the astounding thing about Rent is the variety (and seamless melding) of its music -- R&B, blues, soul, funk, punk and rock -- and the talent of its young cast. There's a full-company number in Act Two that has Mark Leroy Jackson (Tom Collins) and Wichasta Reese's (Mrs. Jefferson) voices circling above the others, reaching into the realms of emotional anguish evoked by the plot, and letting their high notes fly straight into the audience's hearts.

Adrian Lewis Morgan as the lonely musician Roger and Kirk McDonald as the budding filmmaker Mark (and narrator of the play) have pure clear voices that strike beautiful harmonies with each other (they're roommates squatting in an Avenue B loft) and in other permutations. McDonald has a great duet with Mark's ex-lover Maureen's new lover Joanne (Monique Daniels) in "Tango: Maureen," comparing and contrasting her flaws. And Morgan's tenor with the husky-voiced Julia Santana as Mimi produces the seductive "Light My Candle," a direct reference to Puccini's Mimi, and the haunting "I Should Tell You."

Leigh Hetherington as Maureen has a funny solo in "Over the Moon," in which she gets the audience to "moo" with her. Santana lets loose in "Out Tonight." And Andy Senor as the transvestite Angel (and Collins's lover) shines in "Today 4 U." D'Monroe as Benjamin Coffin III (Benny), Mark and Roger's ex-roommate turned capitalist landlord, is a strong presence in song and dance.

Though the plot turns on little more than the love duels and duets among the three couples, the confrontation between Benny as the evicting landlord and the squatters in his empty lot and building, and the progression of AIDS among the seven friends who see themselves as "family," each of these provides ample dramatic tension. How many musicals focus on only one couple? One dying friend? This has more. Much more.

Set design by Paul Clay, costume design by Angela Wendt, lighting design by Blake Burba and sound design by Steve Canyon Kennedy are full of urban funk and broken souls. A metal collage of bicycles and car parts, street signs and iron gates dominates the stage; it is lit with orange and yellow lights that flicker like candles. Wendt has great fun with Angel's wigs and Santa outfit; Kennedy with the reverb in Maureen's moon song.

Rent is a marvelous collaboration, one Larson could be proud of, since the spirit of cooperation and community that he documents in its characters is so evident in its production. And if the songs elicited teenaged squeals of recognition at Tuesday's performance, they also provoked chuckles and nods from the 50-something small-town postman in front of me. The messages of strength and hope and of living each day to the fullest shine through any preconceived notions that audience members bring to these specific characters. They are, after all, singing "How about love?"