The beloved musical Rent focuses on a group of bohemian artists living in Alphabet City during the AIDS epidemic. Their living circumstances are jeopardized when, coincidentally, they all decide not to pay their rent. (Who thinks they can get away without paying rent? Silly artists.) Various relationships are formed in this circle. Songwriter and guitarist Roger Davis (Michael Henley) meets and falls in love with exotic dancer Mimi (Mirabella Sundar Singh), and philosophy professor Tom Collins (Roddy Rodriguez) does the same with Angel (Aaron Hale).
VCDS’s production straddled a spidery two-tier set, flanked on one side by a heavily graffitied garage façade, on which was spray-painted, among other things, a “VCDS” autograph. It was a suitably rough-and-ready set. It lacked the beauty and the funding of Broadway’s splintered wood and textured backdrop, but it got the job done, and it had some charm, too. Crowning the centre platform were pseudo-stained-glass panels. They looked great; I thought the VCDS tech crew members would do cool effects, like shine coloured light through them, but they just hung there, colourfully forlorn. The set’s centerpiece, as it turned out, was an eight-foot dancing pole—of all set pieces, it probably got the most action.
The main cast gave strong performances, from Hale and Singh’s outrageous platform-heel virtuosity, to Katie Pereira’s curiously self-aware and naturalistic Mark. The ensemble had striking moments of their own, and they seemed carefully costumed, albeit with a strong reliance on flannel. Director Shak Haq had a vision so generously extravagant that it obscured those very performances and threatened the clarity of the show, although it was a brilliant sort of threatening. The large amount of black umbrellas at Angel’s funeral functioned like a blackout—immediate, unbearable sombreness. Additionally, I was amazed at how the choreographed orgy in the number “Contact” managed to be so effective. However, the cornucopia of dance numbers, choruses, squeegee men, projections, peddlers handing me empty wine bottles—not to mention the sheer number of bodies on stage at any given time and opening night’s numerous tech issues—collectively made the action hard to follow.
The audio was shaky all evening. The Isabel Bader Theatre is a sizable room, so it’s reasonable to mic the main cast, but the volume balance between main cast and ensemble was such that I’d hear snatches of singing, followed by silences where ensemble soloists couldn’t project their voices. I don’t even know which of those silences were caused by the general saturation of background sound and which were caused by the inexplicable mic cuts that peppered the show. I also suspect that the vocal clarity that microphones provide allowed for some laziness in the visual clarity. In larger numbers like “Rent” I could hear Mark’s voice, but since the microphones freed him from the downstage centre focus, and tech didn’t spotlight him amid the homeless crowd, I had a fun time playing “Missing Mark.” Smaller-scale movement like the lovely duet in “Light My Candle” worked just fine, until Roger’s mic cut. I didn’t hear him again until midway through “La Vie Bohème.”
Technical problems on opening night after limited in-theatre technical preparation are understandable. If, like the Broadway production, this run had over 5,000 nights, mistakes on opening night would be forgettable. Unfortunately, it just so happens that opening night was a full third of this production’s run. Limited technical preparation doesn’t excuse the projections on either side of the stage from being distracting, bluntly edited, and lacking the screen that would have made them clearer.
Who can really blame a show for having a grand vision? Yes, there were some clarity issues, but they were not so bad that they prevented appreciation of the energy and careful love that went into this production. There truly were some breathtaking and heartrending moments. It’s also nice that a relatively big-budget show found room for playful references to this season’s VCDS plays, including a MIKA-themed throwback to Trojan Barbie. I particularly enjoyed the pleasantries of getting mooned, twice.
The dancing, by the way, was sublime throughout.
