Rent

Settle in kids, this is likely gonna be a long one.

If there's one show I can't judge with any sort of objectivity... If there's one show that I can legitimately say had a profound formative effect one me... If there's one show that I'm almost embarrassed to love as much as I do because it seems so easy and so obvious... That show is Rent.

Let's take a little trip down memory lane. What, you got something better to do? I'm 15 years old, living in the suburbs of New York and just starting to fall in love with the theater. I discover Playbill online and start to read about a musical where the creator died just before preview started. Then word of mouth gets really amazing. Then it transfers to Broadway. The day after it opens, I walk to the supermarket to grab a copy of the NY Times (oh, the old days) and read the rapturous review thinking all the time that I MUST see this show. So I borrow my mom's credit card, call Telecharge, and book tickets for months out because everything sooner, at least with regard to the cheap seats, is sold out. In the meantime, I buy the copy of Time with the cast on the cover. I get the cast recording and learn it beginning to end. Finally, I see the show, and I fall for it. Hard. Everything about it screams out to me--this group of artists living in squalor and searching for truth in love and art while battling AIDS seems so incredibly, intensely vital. Coming to terms with being gay in the era of AIDS, feeling uncomfortable in my suburban home, desperately wanting to know more about the world, and being a typical teenager with outsized feelings and curiosities, the entire thing felt so terribly, wonderfully romantic and real.

Yes, looking back, it's possible to question whether the piece was ever truly authentic, whether it romanticized disease and poverty from a position of privilege, and even whether it's that well-constructed dramatically. But when I saw the show in late '96, it was like a sucker punch. It said everything I wanted to hear about the transformative powers of art, love, community, and New York City. Without the heady thrill of the show shaping my notion of what New York was, I doubt I would have moved to New York when I was 18. I always figured I'd end up applying to Brown for college. In Rhode Island. RHODE ISLAND! Pardon me while I judge my 16-year-old self.

The bottom line is that my family, living all of 40 minutes from Manhattan, HATED New York City. They still do. Everyone fled the area but me who moved into the belly of the beast and fell more in love with this city than I've been with anything else in my life (even Rent). So I ended up Manhattan bound, dreaming of the day that I'd be living in an apartment with no heat and all of my friends would have AIDS. Hey, I never said it wasn't a deeply flawed dream.

It wasn't just about New York, though. When I really think about how earnestly I pursued the notion of an "authentic" life, even if I didn't truly understand what I meant by that, a lot of it falls right out of this show. We'll pause here to acknowledge the irony that I wanted to be deeply truthful to myself and based that vision on someone else's work. Irony accepted. Moving on.

I saw Rent ten or so times on Broadway, mostly in its earliest years. That original cast was stupidly perfect. I imagine a tremendous amount of their energy and devotion came out of the bonding experience of doing a show and losing its author right before it started. And, of course, from the rapturous response that followed. So, sure, over the years, the replacement casts got a little wonky, and then the film version happened, but we'll just try to pretend it didn't. But the show itself always held a sway over me and still does. So when it's announced less than three years after it ends its epic Broadway run that they're doing a new version off-Broadway with the original director, I am equal parts thrilled and horrified. And then I saw it. Thrilled and horrified was pretty much the right reaction.

Let's start with this. Acknowledging again my lack of objectivity, I though the show held up pretty damned well. It's a period piece now, especially in its long-gone vision of a Bohemian East Village and also in its treatment of AIDS, a disease that becomes ever more destructive but less localized and less unknowable. But the fact that this show manages three central relationships over the course of a year with all the attendant backstories, the encroaching threat of gentrification as personified by one of their own former friends, and the ways these couples get together, break apart, rejoin, and (in some cases) die, is really beautifully managed, especially when you consider that Act 1 takes place in one day and Act 2 is the entire following year. It may be a but confusing at times, and there are some moments where the dialogue just sort of clunks to the stage as the characters inform us of what happens, but all in all, it's a lot smoother and tighter than one could expect. There's a tremendous amount of information presented, but the pace never lags--all the more impressive since it's nearly sung-through.

Where the new production gets into trouble is occasionally in the direction and more often in the acting. First thing's first: this always bothered me about the original as well: does Michael Greif only direct from a seat in the center of the house? Is he not aware of how severely he limits sightlines? As before, solid chunks of action play behind beams or floating walls depending on where you sit. Apparently there are projections throughout this production, but I certainly didn't see them. And occasionally, I wanted people to just stop moving around the sort of iron jungle gym of a set. It's not that big of a space, so I'm not sure why everyone seemed to be walking for the entire show. Really, though, my complaints here are pretty minimal. So let's get to the part where they get bigger:

Oh, hell, let's start with the biggest. Arianda Fernandez plays the female lead, Mimi. Poorly. Mimi's the bad girl 19-year-old dancer at an S&M club struggling with heroin addiction, AIDS, and high notes. Well...at least in this version. Fernandez looks the part, but I have legitimately never heard a professional performer crack as many times in one show as I did on Friday. "Out Tonight" went from being a sexy number about living on the edge to an endurance test of Fernandez's larynx and the audience's ears. She fared mildly better elsewhere, coming closer to her musical notes but no closer to any sort of emotional truth for the character nor a sexual chemistry with Roger.

Roger and Mimi's meet-cute moment is "Light My Candle," and to be fair, it wasn't only Fernandez's problem that it didn't generate any heat. Heh. Candle. Heat. ANYway...Matt Shingledecker has an awesome last name, some truly amazing pants, and a haircut that looks straight out of Major League. Vocally, he was miles ahead of his love interest, but his performance just read really, really flat.

Working my way down the mediocrity ladder, it really pains me to say than Adam Chanler-Berat who I adored in Next to Normal and even in Peter and the Starcatcher (despite hating that show) also didn't really pop as Mark, our filmmaker narrator. He was adorable, but he played the part of the witness to the action a bit too literally, often fading into the background when I would have loved to see a little more snap from him.

Happily, while my opinions of the three leads ranged from Meh to OHMIGODMAKEITSTOP, the supporting cast was fucking fantastic. As Collins, Ephraim Sykes started off very quiet and subdued, and I wasn't sure where he was going until I saw that as he discovered love with the character Angel, he became fuller and fuller before ultimately bursting out with the deeply emotional, beautifully sung reprise to "I'll Cover You." As Angel herself, MJ Rodriguez may not have had the vocal power or dance technique that Wilson Jermaine Heredia brought to the role, but he acted the hell out of it. In a performance that was one of the most different from the original, Rodriguez was not only more believable as a drag queen than his predecessors, but he navigated the fine line between performative attitude and emotionality incredibly deftly. His choices were never obvious, but they were usually spectacular.

Now let's get to my two favorite performances of the night. And I'll start with one that essentially came from an ensemble member so good that she basically turned off the lights on the rest of the stage when she had her moments to shine. Tamika Sonja Lawrence could give a master class on making the most of a six line role. As the homeless woman near the end of the first act, she was chilling and heartbreaking and delivered line readings that were incredibly different from any I've heard before while making them seem like the only possible legitimate choices. And then as the soloist in "Seasons of Love," she avoided going the typical route of just trying to slam her verse out as loudly as possible, showing off an incredible voice and stunning technique before bringing it on home in that huge, endless final note. Apparently she understudies the much larger role of Joanne, and while I did really enjoy Corbin Read, I'd drop everything to go see her take it on.

Then with a bigger role that similarly read entirely differently than the original, Annaleigh Ashford was brilliant as Maureen. She makes a late entrance, showing up at the end of the first act to do the comedic performance art piece "Over the Moon," her version of which I could just watch on a loop for an hour or two without getting bored. Cranking the femme dial up to 10, she makes Maureen hyper-sassy, uber-funny, and deeply, beautifully recognizable. She is exquisite.

So what's the lesson? I guess that sometimes the very best thing to do is reject everything you're supposed to know about a character and find your own way in. And that Mimi is a pretty tough role to sing and should be re-cast. And that no matter what, I have always loved and will always love Rent, even when it's not at its best.