Cast: Anthony Rapp (Mark), Adam Pascal (Roger), Gwen Stewart (Seasons of Love Soloist & others), Justin Johnston (Angel Schunard), Nicolette Hart (Maureen Johnson), Lexi Lawson (Mimi Marquez)
For the rest of this wonderful cast, see the official Rent The Broadway Tour website.
As almost all fans of Rent know that Anthony Rapp & Adam Pascal (the original Mark & Roger) are currently touring with the show along with original cast member Gwen Stewart and a bunch of other amazing performers. I'm sure it's needless to say (when I saw Rent for the 13th & 14th times this weekend) that I loved the show. I'll simply comment on the things that were different this time around, since everyone knows I love Rent and would recommend it to anyone and everyone - especially when it has three of the original cast members touring with the show.
I still need to look up who Lisa is... as many of you may know, they had always intended to change the names of those attending the life support meeting based on friends/family members of those in the show who had been lost to AIDS. The way I've heard it reported, due to Jonathan's death the show got pretty much frozen where it was and no one ever wanted to change the names of those attending life support with Angel, Collins, & Mark. As of the time I went back to see Rent on Broadway with Anthony & Adam (August & September of 2007), they had changed the last name (originally Sue) to Lisa. I figure she has to be someone pretty important, or they wouldn't have made the change that late in the run of the show. They are still using Lisa on the tour.
The only change they made that I did not like was making parts of the funeral scene like a Greek chorus (where everyone says certain portions). Since this is a funeral and clearly each person came up to talk about their own thoughts and share their memories of Angel, the rest of the cast saying exactly the same thing while the person in question (Mimi, Mark, then Maureen - the three M's, never really noticed that before...) is talking about their own memories. I would give that scene (only because of this change) a C.
The sound board was a mess the last two times I saw Rent on Broadway. In August, I was surprised to see Anthony Rapp have to start "La Vie Boheme" twice (once on time and once rushing things in late, since his mic hadn't been on). This time around, the sound was amazingly well done. They didn't seem to miss any major queues, which is really amazing for songs like "Christmas Bells," which also had a lot of problems the last couple times I saw it on Broadway. In fact, Sunday afternoon Anthony Rapp's mic went out at a horrible time (after Benny tells the pastor he'll pay, everything Mark said was a bit garbled - he then had to go on to do the end of his Buzzline broadcast and sing "What You Own" with Adam Pascal - no time between scenes for them to fix the mic) and they ran a hand held mic out to him very quickly so only a couple of his lines were a little garbled, and "What You Own" sounded perfect (as did most of his sign off to Alexis on Buzzline). Anthony had to deal with holding a mic throughout the one song, but clearly he knows how to hold a mic and this wasn't a problem. When Anthony went off stage, they replaced his regular mic, but I was impressed with how quickly they fixed the problem so everyone there could fully enjoy the show without interruption.
The current cast is really amazing and this weekend's shows were probably the best I've seen due to a combination of the cast and the fact that all the sound issues were gone. I think a few people in the cast were a bit better the last time I saw the show on Broadway, but the overall effect was much better on tour in spite of the Greek chorus aspects of the funeral and the fact that for some reason they kept the house lights on FULL force until Mark said "Smile." in the beginning. This was really annoying for those of us in the rear of the orchestra, since there were very bright lights above us. Personally, my eyes took a while to adjust once the lights went off, since I'd been focusing on stage with the lights above me initially. If you haven't seen Rent yet, see it before Anthony Rapp & Adam Pascal leave the cast - they're amazing and so is the rest of the cast!
Grade: A+
**Note: This review encompasses the 1:00 p.m. show on 3/8/09 & the 8:00 p.m. show on 3/7/09
Labels: Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, Best Musical, drama, musical, Rent, theatre, tour
Reviewed by Kat at the 1:00 PM show | 0 screams