Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Paper Mill Playhouse’s tepid new production of RENT recasts the iconic musical as memory play

• By drediman
• June 21, 2023
• No Comments

Down at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, NJ, you’ll currently find on the boards — just in time for Pride month — a new production of Jonathan Larson’s Rent. When the iconic La bohème-inspired rock opera about artists barely surviving on the grim streets of New York’s East Village premiered in 1996, the AIDS epidemic was still raging on, making the musical’s mantra of living each day to its fullest an urgent and visceral sentiment.

Fast forward nearly three decades later, and Rent has become a sort of curious and dated time capsule — its edginess dulled and its uncompromising idealism now bordering on clichéd. How to come to terms with this new chapter of the musical’s life? Zi Alikhan’s revival attempts to address the dilemma by presenting piece as a memory play, effectively told in hindsight via the film footage captured by the character Mark many years ago (it’s suggested by Alikhan’s production and Larson’s lyrics that he’s the only one among his cohorts to have survive the era’s hard living).

Unfortunately, the revival ultimately fails to capitalize on what on paper is a valid way of level-settling with the Pulitzer Prize-winning work. A few directorial choices completely miss the mark (e.g. the placing of the Life Support meeting in a location where it’s all but visible), and where the musical should be driving and explosive, the staging only comes across as tepid and underpowered. The young cast mostly deliver performances that, while occasionally thrilling vocally, come up short on the requisite heat and passion. Only the youthful Zachary Noah Piser as Mark shows any real semblance of distinctive authenticity.

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RENT
Regional, Musical
Paper Mill Playhouse
2 hours, 30 minutes (with one intermission)
Through July 2