I took in the Hastings High School production of Rent yesterday evening. Make that Rent -- the School Edition. The main pruning that had been done was of F words. Otherwise the show was close to its Broadway size and scope. High school students in downscale East Village chic, heavily miked.
The energy of the music and the lyrics is undeniable. But the running gag of Roger trying to write Musetta's Waltz slyly skirts the issue of harmonic interest: Puccini used a lot more chords than Jonathan Larson! And the amplification had the paradoxical effect of distorting the words and making them just as hard to comprehend as if the singers had been using natural acoustics. Except -- the musical lines lie far too low to be projected without mikes. And the strain of 2 and 1/2 hours of shouting took its toll on many of the lead actors' throats. It is an irony far beyond the thought of the writer that the verismo dramatic style of the original La Boheme has been scuttled for a post-modern stylization while the highly trained singing of a century ago has been traded for verismo, as in real-life, vocal production. The most untrained-sounding voices, made audible by electronic means, are now highly prized. Some of the kids in the show sounded like they had some tone in their tone. Some had raw material of promise. And some didn't get microphones and just moved their mouths (Mimi's drug dealer was essentially a mime part!). As a voice teacher I must confess I recognize the future when I see it. But I feel sad for the passing of singing with overtones, in tune. End of rant -- on this topic!
Next rant -- the ending. Mimi goes through her death scene... and resurrects! A vision of the dead Angel sends her back. And all rejoice and the opera ends happily. It feels as false as the rewritten Shakepeare plays from Queen Anne's time (Othello with a handkerchief found, Lear with a happy reunion). The show does not stick with its convictions and yields to the market-driven need for a feel-good conclusion. It's not as if Mimi doesn't have AIDS anymore (Roger, too). It's not as if one or both of them might not die in the unwritten Act 3. But the cast gets to sing an uplifting ballad and send us on our way. It was exactly as annoying as the ending of Spring Awakening. And the fact that Angel died -- heavy-handed symbolism of drag queen as otherworldly emmissary/OK to kill the femme part of the gay pair -- the second Act is full of predictable, sell-out events.
Sorry, this is not being a review but rather a rant or two. I did enjoy the musical far more than the movie. And the boy who played Roger looks like he has real potential: killer good looks, strong voice (as far as I can tell through the sound system). Angel was played by a boy we know from our UU Society. he was excellent, carrying off his drag with strength and pride -- and two impressive jumps up onto a table.
1 comments:
I DESPISE amplification. OK, I'm a dinosaur and so are you (OK you're a younger dinosaur) but i grew up when you went to the theater to listen and enter into the world of the play, musical or opera, not to be assaulted.
As for those happy endings in Shakespeare, there was a kind of philosophy behind them in addition to sentimentality--there was a belief that God's order was broken when good perished and evil triumphed. Notice that there was no happy ending ever imposed on Macbeth or Richard III because those plays featured characters who had broken the moral order and their destruction was totally appropriate. But the fact that the totally innocent Desdemona should be destroyed in the titanic struggle between Otello and Iago was seen as a negation of the moral order and had to be redeemed. Other changes and additions were made to Macbeth, but not the ending.
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