Rent – Tabard Theatre

Pindar Theatre Productions presents Rent at the Tabard Theatre, London

Rent continues at the Tabard Theatre, London until 31 August.

Rent, a rock opera for the Generation X era loosely based on Puccini’s La Boheme, opened Off-Broadway on 25 January 1996, the day after its creator Jonathan Larson passed away from an undiagnosed aortic aneurysm. It transferred to Broadway and became one of its longest-running shows, where it ran for 12 years and won four Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. However, it has never had the same kind of success over here. It opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre in 1998 and closed the next year, a tour starring model Caprice came to the Prince of Wales Theatre for a few weeks at the end of 2001, and then there was the awful Rent Remixed starring Denise Van Outen where the gritty run-down slums of the East Village and its inhabitants were transformed into a brilliant white box set with high fashion costumes.

The story starts on Christmas Eve and over the course of a year the show tells of the trials and tribulations of a group of bohemians living hand-to-mouth in downtown Manhattan fighting against eviction and dealing with poverty, drug addiction and HIV/Aids. The show is narrated by Mark Cohen (Charlie Royce) a young Jewish documentary film-maker, who shares a loft apartment with Roger Davis (John Sanberg), a songwriter with writer’s block. During a power-cut, Roger, who is an ex-junkie with HIV, first meets Mimi Marquez (Jodie Steele), a club dancer who knocks at his door asking for a light for her candle. There is an instant attraction, but Roger is reluctant to get involved because of his condition and the knowledge that Mimi is doing drugs.

When Tom Collins (Michael Quinn) is mugged outside the guys’ apartment building, he is befriended by Angel Dumott Schunard (William Whelton), a transexual street musician. There also is an instant attraction which turns into the show’s real love affair. Benjamin Coffin III (Waylon Jacobs) who used to live with Mark and Roger is now their landlord and will forego the rent they owe if they promise to stop Mark’s ex-girlfriend, performance artist Maureen Johnson (Kirby Lunn), from performing a New Year’s Eve protest against his plans to evict all the squatters from the block, so he can build a new Cyber Studio.

Of course the show goes on and afterwards the friends go and celebrate at the Life Cafe, (‘La Vie Boheme’), where Maureen’s new partner, lawyer Joanne Jefferson (Ambra Caserotti), arrives to tell them that their apartment block has been padlocked and a riot has broken out in Avenue A. Realising that Mimi is also HIV, Roger finally gives in to her advances. In Act II things take a much darker turn with friends becoming ill and dying.

Director/choreographer Adam Scown and musical director James Doughty, along with a very talented cast, have done a great job of putting on this production (produced by Pindar Theatre Productions) in the small confines of the Tabard Theatre. The only down side is the sound. The band is fine, but some of the vocals are so over-amplified, that even though I was sitting in the second row, I couldn’t make out all the lyrics because the sound was so distorted. I would think that Kirby Lunn, as Maureen, could fill the Albert Hall without a microphone, so hopefully this is something that can been rectified.

Rent has some truly great songs and ‘Seasons of Love’ and the reprise of ‘I’ll Cover You’ are particularly powerful. It is also hard to argue with the show’s positive philosophy which strongly comes across here, that life can be ‘measured in love’, there is ‘no day but today’ and we should ‘take a leap of faith’ and ‘live without fear’.

Peter St James