RENT

Jaxx Theatricals follows their Scenie-winning intimate stagings of Andrew Lippa’s Wild Party and Chess The Musical with an excitingly performed but overly choreographed revival of Jonathan Larson’s Rent.

Taking Puccini’s La Boheme as its starting-off point, Rent focuses on a family of friends made up of would-be filmmaker Mark (Blake Rosier), Mark’s aspiring songwriter roommate Roger (Brennan Eckberg), Cat Scratch Club exotic dancer Mimi (Keyanna Cardenas), drag queen Angel (Jabari), Angel’s philosophy prof boyfriend Collins (Kyler Wells), Mark’s bisexual performance artist ex-wife Maureen (Hannah Staudinger), Maureen’s lawyer girlfriend Joanne (Cameron Jackson), and Mark and Roger’s ex-roommate and current nemesis Benny (Tyler Parks).

The cast is multiracial and multicultural. Roger and Mimi are HIV positive. Angel and Collins have AIDS. “AZT breaks” punctuate the show at frequent intervals.

 Larson’s still-potent songs (“One Song Glory,” “La Vie Boheme,” “Seasons Of Love,” “Take Me Or Leave Me,” etc.) were at Rent’s debut unlike any others previously heard on a Broadway stage, with a pulsating rock beat and gritty lyrics, and the plotlines, revolving around straight, gay, and bisexual characters, many of whom were living with HIV or AIDS, were then as current as today’s headlines.

Rent’s earliest regional stagings hewed closely to the Broadway original, but in more recent years, new directors, choreographers, and designers have been putting their own stamp on Rent.

 Such is definitely the case at Jaxx Theatricals, beginning with a production design that seats audiences on opposite sides of a wide rectangular stage with nobody farther than two rows from the in-your-face action, and never closer up than in the show-opening title song that has the entire cast dancing up an athletic, acrobatic storm only inches from the audience.

Jaxx’s casting choices are equally original, and if Eckberg’s mop-topped teddy bear of a Roger is perhaps too far a cry from Adam Pascal’s lanky, Kurt Cobain-ish rocker, for the most part the casting of the show’s eight leading players is spot on.

What works less well is director-choreographer Jeremy Lucas’s decision transform a number of songs customarily performed by leading players into full-cast music video-style dance numbers that don’t really fit the show.

“Today 4 You,” for example, fills the stage with a half-dozen or so voguing Angels and “Tango Maureen” surrounds Mark and Joanne with a stageful of tangoing duos, something that might work in a different musical, but turns an ensemble otherwise made up of real people (AIDS patients, street people, cops, and assorted parents) into out-of-character backup dancers. Not only this but these intrusive production numbers steal focus from what are intended to be individual performer showcases.

There can be no quibbling about the powerhouse performances given not just by Eckberg but by Rosier (an engaging, bespectacled Mark), Cardenas (a saucy Afro-Latina Mimi), Jackson (a statuesque stunner of a Joanne), Staudinger (a sizzlingly flame-tressed Maureen), and Parks (a slick, edgy Benny), and the sexual-romantic sparks ignited by the equally fabulous Wells and Jabarai as two queer black men in love are palpable from their first encounter.

 Vocally, all eight deliver the power-piped goods, with special snaps to Eckberg’s almost operatic “One Song Glory,” Rosier’s heart-wrenching “Halloween” and “Your Eyes,” Cardenas’s super-seductive “Out Tonight,” Jackson and Staudinger’s battle-of-the-female-rockstars “Take Me Or Leave Me,” and Jabari and Wells’s exuberant uber-romantic “I’ll Cover You.”

Ensemble members RachelMaye Aronoff, Taylor Bailey, Francis Cabison, Isaac Council, Alora Kinley, Kiera Morris, Amare Perkins, LC Powell, James Ramirez, Ty Toker, and JesusDavid TorresMorabito show off acting, song, and dance talents throughout.

 Production design kudos go to Justin Kelley-Cahill for his ingenious ‘90s-nostalgic set (scenic painting by Jeanne-Marie Raubenheimer) and flashy lighting, Morabito, Lucas, and Keny Marine for costumes that aren’t carbon copies of the now iconic Broadway originals, and Jamie Humiston for a rock-concert-ready sound design.

 Last but not least, music director Jill Marie Burke not only elicits the vocal best from her cast but conducts a fabulous four-piece live orchestra: Alec De Kervor on guitar, Karl Vincent on bass, Jacob Walters on keys, and Tom Zygmont on drums.

Rent is produced by Lucas and Morabito. Erin Lee Smith understudies Maureen and Joe Chiapa understudies Collins.

Colin Tracy is stage manager and Keny Marine is assistant choreographer. Kasmira Buchanan is associate choreographer.

I first experienced Rent when the Ahmanson welcomed the show’s First National Tour (starring Neil Patrick Harris as Mark) many years back and I’ve seen over a dozen productions since then.

Jaxx Theatricals’ 28th-anniversary revival may not be at the same level of overall excellence as their 2024 season openers, but if nothing else, it serves as a reminder of what a Broadway game-changer Rent was back in 1996.

The Jaxx Theatre, 5432 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood.
www.Showclix.com/Event/Rent-Jaxx

–Steven Stanley
October 11, 2024

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