Monday, March 22, 2004 | 8:14 a.m.
Author Jonathan Larson, who died shortly before his creation opened on Broadway in 1996, turned a potentially classic modern-day tragedy into a melodrama when he failed to carry the theme of dispair all the way through to the final curtain.
Larson manipulated the ending to telegraph a message of hope, which seems to be antithetical to the subject matter of the musical.
Nevertheless, the production that was at the Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts over the weekend was generally a superb artistic creation. The abstract set was brilliantly designed. The acting by the entire cast of 15 was superb. The more than 30 songs were inspiring.
The music and the lyrics, sung with great emotion, complement the plot perfectly. Together they serve to enhance the dark, foreboding mood of the production that searches for hope in a sea of apparent hopelessness.
"Rent" is one of only five Broadway musicals to win both a Pulitzer Prize for drama and several Tony Awards. Its visit over the weekend was its third in Las Vegas.
It has become one of the longest-running Broadway shows in history.
Based on Giacomo Puccini's opera "La Boheme," "Rent" tells the story of a year in the lives of a group of Manhattan bohemians.
It is an extremely complicated story, with plots, subplots, many characters and a constant flow of action and songs.
The story line follows several relationships and a variety of social issues.
The leads include songwriter Roger (Constantine Maroulis); his best friend and roommate, Mark (Brian Gligor); Mark's former girlfriend, Maureen (Leslie Diamond), and Maureen's new girlfriend, lesbian lawyer Joanne (Rebecca Jones).
Benny (Daryl C. Brown) owns the apartment. He used to date S&M dancer and drug addict Mimi (Jaime Lee Kircherner), who falls in love with Roger. Benny was once Roger's and Mark's roommate, but he now owns the apartment building.
Also in the cast are philosophy teacher Tom Collins (Marcus Paul James) and transvestite Angel (Damien DeShaun Smith).
Roger has not left his apartment in the six months since his girlfriend killed herself after they both found out they were HIV-positive. He is trying to write a song, but has writer's block. Mimi, who is also HIV-positive, comes to the apartment to ask Roger (whom she has never met) to light her candle. There is an immediate attraction.
Collins is also HIV-positive, and his new friend, Angel, is dying of AIDS.
During the first act Benny announces plans to tear down the tenement and to use the site and an adjacent lot to build a hi-tech cyber-arts studio. It concludes with with a Christmas Eve protest that turns into a riot.
Benny padlocks the apartment building, locking out the tenants.
Act II opens on New Year's Eve with tenants breaking into the building and continues through a year in the life of the play's characters.
"Rent" is somewhat dated. These days there aren't as many protests in the United States, where residents have grown comparatively complacent and conservative in the decades since the free speech and peace movements of the '60s.
And AIDS is not as dramatic an issue as it was when the musical was written. The production might have been more shocking when it premiered.
But the story is about more than health issues. "Rent" is about class struggle; about oppression; about coping with hardships; about relationships and about surviving in a world that can seem cold, cruel and heartless.
And perhaps most of all, "Rent" is about wrestling with the deepest urges that often sew the seeds of our self-destruction.
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