{"id":2774,"date":"2004-08-30T04:51:35","date_gmt":"2004-08-30T18:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/08\/30\/rent\/"},"modified":"2019-12-11T08:09:23","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T16:09:23","slug":"rent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2004\/08\/30\/rent\/","title":{"rendered":"Rent"},"content":{"rendered":"

As mentioned briefly last week, Saturday’s evening entertainment was wandering down a couple blocks to the Paramount Theatre<\/a> to see Rent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Prairie has been a fan of Rent for a while, and had tried to introduce me to the music a while ago, but I just hadn’t been able to get a good feel for what was going on simply by listening to the soundtrack album. Thinking about it on the way home after the show, I realized that part of that may have been because every other major musical that I’ve seen (Cats<\/a>, Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/a>, Phantom of the Opera<\/a>, Jesus Christ Superstar<\/a>, Tommy<\/a>, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat<\/a>), I knew the story before picking up the soundtrack album, either through reading the source material or because I’d learned it while singing the songs back when I was in the Alaska Children’s Choir<\/a>. With Rent, I had no real idea of what the plot was and what was happening, and I couldn’t quite pick it up just by listening to the album.<\/p>\n

Now that I’ve seen the show, though, suddenly it all falls into place. “La Vie Boheme” and “Tango: Maureen” were by far my favorite songs, though the entire soundtrack is a blast. I can certainly see why it’s such a popular show.<\/p>\n

Our particular performance was quite good, though not perfect. The sound technician was sometimes a little late when activating people’s microphones, so we’d occasionally lose the first couple words of someone’s lines when they appeared. A couple of the performers didn’t have quite as strong a voice as they probably should have (most notably Tallia Brinson as Mimi — while she wasn’t bad<\/em> by any means, she didn’t quite have the raw power that songs like “Out Tonight” require).<\/p>\n

I was also confused for a while about Angel’s character — I knew that the character was supposed to be a drag queen from when Prairie had first tried to introduce me to the music, but Damien DeShaun Smith<\/a> had such an incredibly feminine voice that I really wasn’t sure if it was a male or female playing Angel until I checked the program during intermission. It made for a slightly confusing first act (as a female Angel would greatly change the dynamic of the relationship with Tom Collins)…of course, on the bright side, if Damien really is a drag queen (off-stage, that is), he’s sure to do a spectacular job! ;)<\/p>\n

All in all, though, while not a perfect performance, it was extremely good, and I’ve got a new musical to eventually commit to memory.<\/p>\n

iTunes:<\/strong> “La Vie Boheme” by Original Broadway Cast from the album Rent<\/em> (1996, 8:00).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As mentioned briefly last week, Saturday’s evening entertainment was wandering down a couple blocks to the Paramount Theatre to see Rent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2035,2549,2043],"tags":[13,80],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2774"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}