What a piece of work is Rent. How ill-conceived in form. How displeasing to the eye. How stupidly far up it’s own arse. Happily, I have never suffered through the hit Broadway musical of the same name. Unless I am kidnapped and nailed into a seat with my eyeballs duct-taped open, that is unlikely to change now.
Watching Chris Columbus’ filmed version, it’s hard to think of positives or indeed, cling to life. If you yearn for the mawksploitation of illness-of-the-week AIDS dramas like Longtime Companion and It’s My Party, then Rent’s ‘move away from the light’ scenes might float your boat. If you’ve often wondered what a rock-opera by Mr. Mister might sound like, well, the two-and-a-quarter hours of putrefied power ballads might satisfy your curiosity.
The source material, Henri Murger’s serial Scenes de la Vie de Boheme, may be 150 years old, but it’s the intricate 80s backdrop that screams last century. It’s one thing to re-imagine Murger’s garrets as East Village squats populated by whiney HIV positive alt-performers, drag queens and strippers. It’s another thing entirely when it looks like a Cher video.
Any residual romantic notions pertaining to starving artistry are mercilessly dispensed by an onslaught of dated self-regarding dirges celebrating Pablo Neruda, dildos and, heaven help us, Pee Wee Herman.
But The Man is coming to burst their bubble.
“How will we pay last year’s rent?” sing the boho kids. “They’re kicking us out.”
Sigh. That’s usually how these things work, you dolts.
The gang, however, possess a trump card. They’re going to stage a spoken word performance! There’ll be hubcaps and Christmas lights and monologues about cows spurting diet coke and everything! That ought to learn those corporate types. They’re going to look all shocked and stuff, just like they do in Wannabe, the great Spice Girls mute play for class revolution.
Throughout this studio-financed rally for the avant garde, it’s impossible not to think of the squarer kids in The Mystery Machine or Milos Forman’s unhip hippies from Hair. (For all the singing about sodomy, Rent does for alt-lifestyles what Mr. Columbus’ Mrs. Doubtfire did for transvestites.) It’s equally impossible not to hear “Everyone has AIDS” from Team America; World Police strike up on your internal play-list.
Unintended hilarity aside, I just don’t get it. But if you’re a fan then knock yourself out. Really. Please do. Worse than Chicago, even.