KCMETROPOLIS.org
Kansas City's Online Journal of the Performing Arts

Recreating Rent, Jonathan Larson’s modern classic rock opera about life on the edge, is an ambitious task to be undertaken prudently—and urgently at the same time. It takes a certain emotional adrenaline to drive this dark and uplifting musical drama, to create a world in which meaningful connection is always possible, but any dream could die tomorrow: No day but today. This month, the ensemble at the Barn Players Community Theatre, as directed by Eric Magnus, staged a youthful production with heart—and a real heartbeat.

For Larson's loose retelling of Puccini’s La bohème, The Barn’s stage was appropriately intimate, and the singing talent—backed by a five-piece band—is impressive, if a bit uneven. As frontman Roger, Robert Hingula (a labor lawyer by day, folks) displayed all the chops needed for the role and more. Justin Dehmer (Mark) and Linnaia McKenzie (Mimi) held their own, but only match his power on occasion. The same was true for Mackenzie Zielke (Mark’s ex, Maureen), who shined in her Act One solo, but couldn’t quite keep up with Eboni Fondren (Joanne) in their signature showdown, “Take Me or Leave Me.” With his charismatic presence, Bryan LaFave was well cast as Angel, and soulful-voiced Matthew King (Collins) rivaled Hingula for most confident (and competent) vocal performance.

Music director Kevin Hershberger deserves credit for the seamless ensemble numbers; when the 19-member company sang together (or, more specifically, in four-part harmony, in the round, etc.), the result was soundtrack worthy. In particular, Chris Burke and Kevin Rehrer—as well as Abby Schultz and Keron Wright, featured vocalists in “Seasons of Love”—stood out for their brief but memorable solos.

Tiffany Garrison-Schweigert’s limited set of scaffolding and graffiti-and-poster-covered backdrops was faithful to the original, serving primarily as a framework for the ensemble characters that were fluidly blocked by Magnus into the background of the majority of scenes. Their costumes (overseen by Deb Winstone) seemed colorful and authentic enough—though my companion at the performance noticed some of the cast wearing True Religion jeans (retail price: $200-400 per pair), which sort of broke her starving-East-Village-artist suspension of disbelief.

Rent is a soundtrack musical—nearly perfect on the CD, but on the stage not as much. The music is literally stirring; throughout the sold-out house of 150, heads are bobbing, lips are moving in sync to the lyrics. If anyone in the audience didn’t know this libretto by heart, they were sitting next to someone who did.

Without the particularly remarkable vocal polish of, say, originators Idina Menzel or Daphne Rubin-Vega, the cracks in the storyline become much more apparent. Some of the characters’ relationships (and particularly their interrelationships) are confusing, scenes seem disjointed, and at times the sung dialogue—even as it scans slickly to the robust score—is clunky and clichéd. (In this production, Magnus’s direction tries to make up for some of it, with a little tongue-in-cheek staging and well-timed focus shifts.)

I have always believed that, had Larson not died the night before the show’s off-Broadway debut, he and others would have made significant improvements, particularly to act two. I know that is blasphemy to the millions of fans who see Rent as the perfect rock opera, particularly the teenagers who grew up loving it as their own. It landed on Broadway with such a bang in part because it carried a voice largely unheard on the Great White Way and confronted issues—homelessness, homophobia, social disorder, and disease—that spoke to and about a newer generation. It confronted and celebrated the fragility of the here-and-now, and it did so here and now, not in the abstract or set in some distant time on some distant continent.

Watched from the other side of the late-‘90s boom and the subsequent bust (not to mention all that's happened since, like the rise of the Internet, 9/11, two long, ongoing wars, Facebook, etc.), Rent is striking as a period piece. I had forgotten what a major presence pay phones are in the show. Though Bohemia still isn’t dead in 2010, the rousing tribute to “La Vie Bohème” that ends act one feels a bit dated.

Does the trouble in believing that Rent’s motley bunch of nonconformists could blossom into such a tight-knit community in a matter of moments (or even 525,600) represent a flaw in the world Larson created, or in the one we live in now, where we make “friends” with the click of a mouse? Prompting such self-reflection is what makes good art, dated or not, ever relevant.

The ensemble, it seems, has no such qualms. It’s obvious onstage (and from the offstage enthusiasm, after the performance) that these cast members—most of whom were children when Rent debuted—have fully bought into the show’s enduring pertinence and message of immediate connection. For them, “There’s only us, there’s only this…”

And no day but today. For two more weekends.

REVIEW:
The Barn Players
Rent
Book, Music, and Lyrics by Jonathan Larson
Directed by Eric Magnus
Runs November 5–November 21 (Reviewed Saturday, November 6, 2010)
The Barn Players Community Theatre
6219 Martway, Mission, KS
For tickets call 913-432-9100 or online to www.thebarnplayers.org

By Victor Wishna

Senior Editor, Theatre; Theatre and Features Contributor
Victor Wishna is a writer, editor, and author, among other things. A graduate of Stanford University and the New School's creative writing MFA program, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Baltimore Sun, the Miami Herald, the Kansas City Star, Humanities, and other major magazines and newspapers. He contributes a weekly real estate feature to the New York Post and his column “Letter from New York” is syndicated nationally.

With photographer Ken Collins, he published In Their Company: Portraits of American Playwrights (Umbrage Editions, 2006), for which he conducted and edited interviews with 61 prominent stage writers including Edward Albee, August Wilson, Tony Kushner, Wendy Wasserstein, and many others. The book won a 2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards Silver Medal (www.intheircompany.com).

He has always maintained a love for theatre, as a writer, an audience member, and even an actor, appearing in several community and semi-professional productions. As an undergraduate, he studied acting and playwriting with Anna Deavere Smith, in addition to journalism and psychology (and not engineering or medicine).

After nearly 12 years in New York City, Victor recently returned to his hometown with his wife, Annie, also a K.C. native. When not writing for publication or pleasure, Victor is honing his stand-up routine, which he has performed at numerous clubs and special events around New York, the Midwest, and elsewhere. In June 2010, he was named New York’s second-funniest amateur Jewish comedian by The Jewish Week. Seriously.