Theater Review of Rent: Stage Production vs Cinema - Article Example

Rent”: In Film and On Stage 2005 Introduction Tragically, every time Rent is performed on stage or rendered on film, it ends up being compared with the earlier version and viewed with contempt. Critics have compared the latest film version, directed by Chris Columbus, with stage productions and has been interpreted as a flat, unintelligent rendition of the original Broadway production that, in turn, had met with unfriendly criticisms for lacking the musical richness and the artistic merit of Puccini’s great opera, La Boheme, set in 19th century Paris, the inspiration and guide of both the film and the plays. Ironically, when some modern directors ventured to transplant the opera into a twentieth century Paris surrounding, it provoked debates and arguments inevitably challenging the worth of such renditions. So, one has to be cautious of the noticeable aversion about new renditions of Rent when reviewing either the stage production or its mis-en-scene. A Theatre review of Rent Based on Puccini's classic opera La Boheme, the late composer/librettist, Jonathan Larson's innovative rock opera Rent depicts the story of the frustrated, impoverished East Village artists of the late-1980s and their struggle to live and pay their rent. The storyline of this play, first performed in 1996, that heralded a new age for the Broadway musical in a nutshell is this: Roger, an HIV-diseased songwriter, trying his best to write “one great song” before he dies, has just come back from rehabilitation center and has joined his documentary filmmaker roommate, Mark. The story begins on Christmas Eve of 1989 with the two friends worrying about how they would raise the fund for paying the rent due to their landlord Benny, an ex-chum, who has turned insensitive and lost his empathy after his marriage to a well-off woman belonging to the fashionable society of New York, who pushes him upwardly. The next week, their friend, Collins, a gay ex-professor who is attacked on his first night back to the city and is looked after by the empathetic drag queen Angel, joins them. Roger, cut off from the world, has a halfhearted relation with a striptease performer, Mimi, while Mark attempts to come to terms with Maureen his care-free ex-girl friend, who is going out with Joanne, her new lesbian crush. The Fabulous Fox Theatre at St. Louis began the year 2005 (Jan 7-9) with the rock musical, Rent, which opens up with the theme song, “Seasons of Love,” one of the musicals’ most gripping. Unfortunately, its author Jonathan Larson died at age 35 just before the show was formally released. He was suffering from an undetectable Marfan disease. The production, directed by Michael Greif, though has flaws, which raised eyebrows of the erudite people familiar with Puccini’s, La Boheme. But, it exhilarated the youngsters who prefer the type of music that Rent has — deafening, incoherent, and, perhaps, a bit silly. La Boheme supercedes and remains untouched because of the grandeur of opera, setting of the 19th century Paris, the costumes, songs and compositions for which even a “Small-scale Boheme shows some range”, as Richard Covello’s review in the Opera Theatre North sometimes in 1991 was titled. The aura of Café Momus of 19th century Paris, i.e, Puccini’s Paris (Waltz songs by the opera’s fille de joie Musetta, the string quartets from the piano, the performance of the Soprano singer (Mimi), the outstanding baritones (Covello, 2005) were also enriched by the string tradition of opera music. Rent obviously does not even pose to have that since it deals with the problem of urban bohemians of New York, a century after Puccini’s La Boheme, when tuberculosis is no more considered a terminal disease. Jonathan Larson’s New York is a city of the late 1980’s when AIDS is showing its dreading face and which we all vow to fight against to bring the world to a healthy, booming and lively place. In Grief’s Rent, we are back to New York of the late 1980s, the disease and the dreams of generation that wants to create music and a lifestyle of its own. To quote Larson, it is the narration of “a community celebrating life in the face of death and AIDS, at the turn of the century” (as cited in Crouse, 2005). Surely, the production has lots of weak points and flaws in it. But that might flow from the author’s side too. The pursuit of Roger (Dan Rosenbaum) to compose his swan song, takes much stage time, may be annoying to an extent. The character called Mark (Andy Meeks) doesn't appear much dejected when deserted by Maureen (Ava). But Maureen emerges out as a frivolous soul, playing superficial, flirting with the charming female pub assistant Joanne (Adrienne Fishe). And hats off to Mimi (Tallia Brinson) - she really lives the tradition that we find in La Boheme’s Mimi, may be in a more touching way. In Luhrmann's production of La Boheme (in Broadway Theatre, 2002), where he changes the setting from early 19th Paris of Puccini to a mid-20th surrounding, Mimi appears more as an epitome of physical desire, sometimes flaunting her sexual passions openly (Murray, 2002). Mimi, as depicted by Grief, gives the impression of a woman vacillating between passion for life and addiction. Collins (Marcus Paul James) also convincingly portrays a person between two worlds - one where he belongs, erudite, refined, and the bohemian world, which really takes care of him as shown by the empathy of Angel (Damien DeShaun Smith) a transvestite who lovingly takes care of him after he is attacked by muggers in a NYC lane. The music by Tim Weil is not too remarkable, especially when it comes to individual performance. The lyrics sometimes do not match the music, acting virtually at an imperceptive angle. Especially those who have had the occasion to watch Luhrmann’s opera can at the best give a B+ to it. Review of the film Rent, according to some critics, may be a milestone in the Broadway history of Theatres but its mis-en scene (2005) by Chris Columbus , the director of Home Alone, the first two "Harry Potters" and Mrs. Doubtfire, is a model example of how bad rendition can have disgusting outcomes in any art form, especially in cinema. It's a methodically mediocre idea for a film to be a direct recast of a theatre. In a stage production, the director of the play (be it a musical/experimental/narrative), one does not need to initiate the audience about the theme of the play. Closeness exists between the actors and their audience. This cannot be simulated in a film. A replacement has be innovated for this void and a way must be located to keep the spirit of musicals high, the way one finds it in West Side Story or Oklahoma or Chicago. Run of the mill versions like Rent does not attain any artistic significance for this lack of vision (Berardinelli, 2005) making it, to quote, Star Tribune, “a charmless floperetta” no matter how many Oscars it has received eventually. The film opens in a theatrical way (and we already know about Columbus’ obsession to follow the original text, the Harry Potters are glaring examples) and we listen to the Seasons of love with all the characters whom we would soon find desperately seeking the muse of art — Mark as a film maker, Roger as a composer, Mimi as a dancer, etc. There are the so-called yuppies and scholars - professors Collins and Ben, the ex-artsy, married to a rich NewYorker socialite, thus turning into a cruel landlors of his ex-pals. There are Maureen, Angel et al — all singing and tiring us to the point of no return. Spiteful critics have also scoffed at the attempt to give it a multicultural hue. They have, of course, contemtously commented that this attempt has finally turned the context to appear like a multinational corporation. A lot has been made of the show's multicultural makeup, which appears like a corporation that makes fun of multiplicity by hiring people of upper echelon of all shades. Rent, to them provides the most insipid racial hors d’oeuvre one can think of. We come to know that Mark is Jewish through a handful of jokes that would anger any sensible viewer because of its implications. It seems that Collins is black, Angel is Hispanic, Mimi is a mix of both black and Hispanic but their characters carry no useful association with their backgrounds. Both the film's black characters are treated in a racial manner as is common in America today (startribune.com). But then, we have to accept that Columbus’ film depicts America as a a multinational company so he is justified to have the artist’s license. When it was first staged, Rent was a ground-breaking play – a daring musical, considering that it dealt with a theme related to AIDS (four of the eight characters are affected by the disease) and its socio-psychological aftereffects. But fortunately for our world, and perhaps unfortunately for this film, the problem appears to fall behind times and a little immature, at least the way it has been dealt with by Columbus, with his pedestrian political sermons and emotional howls. Creation of some of the human rapport sometimes appears touching only to be disturbed by weak portrayal of characters. Mimi, Tom, and Joanne, the three among the eight characters, seem convincing. Roger is all too self-absorbed and dull; Mimi is the glaring exception. The film uses many of the actors who played in the original 1996 New York production and the newcomers, Rosario Dawson and Tracie Thoms has done pretty well. Rent can be rated as a cultural relic and social statement about AIDS. But does it emerge as a musical, asks Roger Ebert in his review of the film (Ebert, 2005). But, if you stand back from the importance of Rent as a cultural artifact and a statement about AIDS, does it stand on its own as a musical, he asks (rogerebert.suntimes.com). He does not think so. The lyrics of Jonathan Larson, according to Ebert, have something clumsy about it, maybe deliberately so --the words are “at right angles to the music”. Of course, he does not expect the lyrics always to carry a linear meaning but “they should flow with, or even against, the music”, which is not the case here. “The music serves the choreography, the words serve the story, but they don't serve one another”, he comments. As for the acting, all reviewers, including the more accommodative and rational Ebert, hold the opinion that Mimi (Dawson) and Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia) are three-dimensional portraits of the real. But as for Mark (Anthony Rapp), he is utterly hopeless in his role as a documentary filmmaker and Roger (Adam Pascal) as a musician. Mark does neither look nor live the character. Likewise, Joanne (Thoms) has been portrayed quite realistically but Maureen is far from being so. Ben (Taye Diggs), the third roommate of Rogers and Mark, who turns out to be their oppressive landlord trying to evict them, looks like a character planned only for the flow and the dramatic side of the films and has little to contribute on his own. He is almost like those two “poker-faced middle-aged men” who mirrors the society’s detached and cool attitude towards this youthful ambience. But we remain at dark about their reactions, perhaps intended by the director, who, at the end loses his way (Ebert, 2005). Still, Rent has become popular enough for being taken more seriously than what how-brow critics feel about it. The movie, like the stage production, asks the question: “how do you measure the life of a woman or a man?” and takes us through one year in the lives of eight modern bohemians fighting against death, disease, failures and financial crises. We are reminded of what might happen to our dreams and lives if there were “no day but today”. But, comparing the film with the stage production, one has to admit that art has prevailed more in the latter than in the former. Such a comparison is not wise and rational either but one of the reasons for comparing it so might originate from Columbus’ own fault of selecting most of the actors from the stage production, thus provoking comparisons (Owen, 2005) Works Cited Richard Covello, Small-scale 'Boheme' shows some range, retrieved from http://www.operatheatrenorth.org/boheme_trib.html Crouse, Nancy, Theatre Review – Rent, retrieved fromhttp://www.kdhx.org/reviews/rent_0501.html Murray, Matthew Theatre Review, 2002, retrieved from http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/LaBoheme.html James Berardinelli, http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/r/rent.html http://www.startribune.com/stories/1553/5741803.html Ebert, Roger / November 23, 2005, http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051122/REVIEWS/51116001/1023 Owen, Sarah, Film Review, 2005, retrieved fromhttp://www.townhall.com/opinion/books_entertainment/reviews/SarahOwen/177424.html Read More