Composer and playwright Jonathan Larson accumulated a veritable treasure chest of awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book and Best Original Score as well as the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical, Book and Lyrics, all for his seminal work “Rent.” Unfortunately, tragically, Larson died the day before the first preview of “Rent” Off-Broadway at the age of 35 in New York City.
A musical adaptation of Puccini’s opera “La Boheme,” “Rent” shadowed much of Larson’s life as he too lived in a rundown New York apartment with many roommates, including having a love affair on and off with a female dancer. He used an illegal wood- burning stove to combat the building’s lack of heat, with everyone a struggling artist trying to create a bohemian life style. One of Broadway’s longest running shows, you now have the unique opportunity to experience Jonathan Larson’s opus “Rent” at the Center Stage of Shelton until Sunday, July 28.
In 1989, when Larson was only 29, he began working on the musical “amid poverty, homelessness, spunky gay life, drag queens and punk.” The title “rent” stands for lives “torn apart.” Puccini’s work more than 100 years earlier centers on young wannabe artists and the devastation of tuberculosis while Larson introduced HIV/AIDS, Puccini’s Paris became New York’s East Village, and many of the characters’s names stayed close to the same.
For example, Mimi the seamstress sick with TB is now Mimi (Grace Lupoli/Megan Loaicano) the exotic dancer with HIV. The poet Rodolfo is now Roger (Isabel Sonnabend/Harry Rosenay), a song writer/musician who is HIV positive and Mimi’s boyfriend. Roger’s roommate is Mark (Ian Rosenay/Jacob Marcus), a filmmaker, adapted from Marcello, a painter. The singer Musetta becomes Maureen, (Ashley Carpp/Macie Cox) a bisexual performance artist who loves Joanne, (Lauren Wienenmann/Alyssa Grosso) a lesbian lawyer, while the musician Schaunard is now the drag queen Angel. Angel (Ryan Romero/Jacob Ebert) is dating Tom Collins,(Carlos Perez/Nolan Young) the earnest philosopher Colline who teaches his theories of life at college.The landlord Benoit is now Benny. (Spenser Fiske/Nick Gugliotti).
Larson wrote “Rent” in part to celebrate the achievements of the artists stolen by illness so young and to show how the community copes with a tragedy within its ranks.
In “Rent,” we meet Mark the narrator cinematographer who is chronicling the activities of his friends as he adjusts to his ex- girlfriend Maureen’s new relationship with Joanne . Meanwhile his roommate Roger is trying desperately to compose one “glory” song before AIDS takes him. His chance meeting with another AIDS patient Mimi may be just the impetus and candle of inspiration he needs.
The time is Christmas eve and there is no holly and no heat, no mistletoe and no money, but the motley group have gathered to celebrate with the natural exuberance and hope that the youth cling to so promisingly. Sexual gender blurs as this questioning generation musically explores the seasons of love contained in the 525,600 minutes that make up a year, contemplate the death of the soul in “Without You” and do a dance of protest in “Tango: Maureen.”
For tickets ($18-36), call the Center Stage, 54 Grove Street, Shelton at 203-225-6079 or online at www.centerstageshelton.org. Performances are Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.
Explore this spirited and high decibel Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning musical, wonderfully staged by Liz Muller, with talented principles, understudies, red and blue casts that explodes to the rafters with a hunger for love, life and art.
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