No matter how many times you’ve seen Jonathan Larson’s legendary rock musical Rent, you have never seen it “dancified” the way Lineage Performing Arts Center dancifies their shows, just one reason why Lineage’s unique take on the 1990s Broadway classic is well worth checking out.

Not that Rent didn’t already work perfectly fine as originally staged.

Take for instance its now iconic cast of multiracial and multicultural characters, a group of 20somethings inspired by the bohemians of Puccini’s La Boheme but living in the mean streets of New York at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

There’s certainly no need to change a thing about would-be filmmaker Mark (Aidan Rawlinson), who serves as our narrator, or Roger (Emmon Amid), his aspiring-songwriter roommate, or Mimi (Alyssa Holmes), the Cat Scratch Club exotic dancer whom Roger falls for, or philosophy prof Collins (Donnie Riddle) who goes gaga for “drag queen” Angel (Andrew Abaria), or Mark’s bisexual performance artist ex-wife Maureen (Jana Souza) and her lawyer girlfriend Joanne (Jade Duong), or Benny (Trae Adair), Mark and Roger’s ex-roommate and current nemesis.

Nor is there anything to change about Rent’s songs (“One Song Glory,” “La Vie Boheme,” “Seasons Of Love,” “Take Me Or Leave Me,” etc.), unlike any previously heard on a Broadway stage with their pulsating rock beats and gritty lyrics, or its plotlines revolving around characters of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, many of whom were living with HIV or AIDS.

All this is to say that Rent revolutionized the Broadway musical, much as Oklahoma! and West Side Story did in their day, and though much has changed since its cast of characters were “living in America at the end of the millennium,” it remains vibrant and vital in 2025, peopled with folks whose individual concerns may reflect a specific time and place but continue to resonate three decades later, and directors Hilary Thomas and Rob Lewis are smart enough not to mess with any of this.

And it’s not as if choreography hasn’t been a part of Rent from the get-go in dance moves performed in character by ensemble cast members as assorted New Yorkers in the show-stopping title song and the rousing “La Vie Boheme.”

This time round, however, ensemble players Cynthia Crass, Ali Hoghoughi, Sophia Kaminski, Courtney Outland, Diana Leon, and Paul Siemens (all terrific in their vocal and acting cameos as parents, street people, and AIDS patients) leave the dancing up to Nola Gibson, Lenard Glenn “LG” Malunes, Molly Mattei, Caterina Mercante, Ericalynn Priolo, Austin Roy, Marco Tacandong, Thomas, Teya Wolvington, and Meghann Zenor, who reveal in choreographer Thomas’s interpretive dance moves what Rent’s major and minor characters are thinking and feeling and experiencing at any given moment while giving this Rent a uniquely surreal feel.

It’s a director/choreographer’s concept that could easily have backfired, but because this Rent establishes its surrealism from the get-go (the nearly bare set helps in this), it works.

Not that Thomas and Lewis stint where lead performances are concerned, beginning with curly-haired charmer Rawlinson’s engagingly quirky take on Mark and Souza’s scene-stealing Maureen, whose “Over The Moon” is as cute and funny and wonderfully wacky as I’ve ever seen the performance piece performed.

Rapidly rising newcomer Amid sings the living blazes out of Roger, Holmes sizzles as Mimi, and Abaria makes for the sassiest of Angels opposite Riddle’s deeply felt Collins, who turns “I’ll Cover You” reprise into far more than simply a vocal showcase.

Add to that Duong’s feisty Maureen and Adair’s bad-guy-you-can’t-help-but-like Benny and you’ve got a cast of up-and-comers to be reckoned with.

It helps enormously to have a terrific five-piece rock band backing cast vocals under keyboardist Alan Geier’s direction (cast member Crass doubles as musical director), and vocals and instrumentals expertly mixed by sound designer John Guth.

Randy Brumbaugh’s striking lighting design went off mostly without a hitch on opening night (Charlie Bryant is lightboard operator) and uncredited costume designs are mostly character-appropriate, though Benny’s outfits probably ought to come across a bit more upscale as befits his newly-achieved financial status.

Rent is produced by Peggy Burt. Sarah Alaways is dance ensemble swing.

I’ve now seen well over a dozen Rents since the Ahmanson welcomed the show’s First National Tour (starring a 25-year-old Neil Patrick Harris as Mark) back in 1997 and I can say without hesitation that none has been as uniquely original as Lineage Performing Arts Center’s attention-worthy take on Roger, Mark, Mimi, Angel and their fellow NYC bohemians. Considering how many times Rent has been revived, that is saying something indeed.

Lineage Performing Arts Center, 920 E Mountain St, Pasadena.
www.lineagepac.org

–Steven Stanley
September 24, 2025

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Tags: Jonathan Larson, Lineage Performing Arts Center, Los Angeles Theater Review