You all know the backstory, right? Nicci is mildly-to-moderately obsessed with this musical called Rent, which opened off Broadway in 1996, and made it to Broadway three months later. The show’s creator died the night before the off-Broadway premiere. Even though Nicci was only eleven years old at the time, this story had influenced her immensely. I don’t know why, she’s not a squatter and she doesn’t have AIDS…but, nevermind. I never saw the show on Broadway (I was more into…uh, baseball?), but my mother and sister did. My sister sang all the songs so I knew it was a rock opera. Other than that, all I knew about the show I learned from Team America: World Police. And what I learned was that everyone in the cast has AIDS and maybe they all die at the end?

You could imagine Nicci’s excitement when a touring company (including two of the original Broadway cast members) announced a string of shows here in Los Angeles at the Pantages theater. She immediately bought us tickets for opening night. For weeks, she’s been shushing me every time I start to sing, “Everyone has AIDS!” and making me swear I would approach the production with an open, unbiased, pro-AIDS mind. So, what did I think, you ask? Well, let me answer that question for you.

It totally sucked!

Juuuuuuust kidding. I shouldn’t have written something so insensitive. That was wrong of me, and now I’ll have to live with it for as long as it takes me to forget I wrote it.

The play was pretty good! As I said earlier, I recognized a bunch of the songs, and they sounded a lot better now that my sister was not singing them. See, when she sings them, there’s no melody, there’s only a shrill, nasally whine. Now that I’ve heard talented singers sing those songs, the show makes much more sense. For years I was always like, “What’s so good about Rent? Those songs are horrible! Turns out I was wrong, and that the miserable, horrible entity was not Rent, but merely my sister.

The guy who played Tom Collins (a homosexual philosophy professor) had a really good voice. Also the last name of the guy who played his part is McElroy! Just like Pat! Does that make Pat a gay? I think so!

…The guy who played Roger (who was one of the two original Broadway cast members) didn’t have a good voice. It was too refined for the part. It sounded — like I told Nicci last night — as if he showed up to the theater thinking he was the lead in The Dude Of The Opera, not some rock ‘n’ roll recovering-junky squatter guy. Maybe that Tony Award nomination went to his head or something. The guy who played Mark Cohen (veeeeery original name) was quite good. I recognized him as that douchey character in School Ties. I think he was also a Nazi sympathizer in that role. I heard in real life he worships Nazis too. He makes me sick.

The biggest problems I had with the show were that it was often difficult to understand the dialogue between characters because everything was sung or sung-spoken. Annoying! There was some storyline about a dog and a wife who had the same name, and they both died or were murdered? I didn’t get that…Also, there was too much jumping on tables and off tables while singing. To me, that screams bad ’80s high school movie. You know the “move” I’m talking about: a dude is singing and he suddenly jumps from floor-to-table and then starts waving his arm back and forth in front of him like he’s drizzling fairy dust on the audience? It’s retarded. Anyway, there was a lot of that. There was one song or two, I think it was the combination of “Out Tonight” and “Another Day”, that sounded not-a-so-good, if I may briefly slip into a bizarre and entirely unnecessary Italian accent. Other songs, like “Santa Fe” and “I’ll Cover You” were nice, with likable melodies. That song “La Vie Boheme” made no sense to me. It was like a goofy response to “We Didn’t Start The Fire.”

I know this is going to make me sound like a dumbass, but I was really shocked at the end when not all of the characters died of AIDS! Only one of them dies! Nicci started crying, but she stopped soon after I leaned over and whispered, “They’ll never let you be in this play if you start crying every time someone dies.”

After the show, Nicci informed me that we would be waiting outside the stage door to meet the cast and crew, because she had to obtain the autographs of the two stars of the show. At this point, she informed me, we were going to be standing around with what she called “Rent Heads,” or people who are obsessed with Rent. Unfortunately for me, Nicci happens to be one of these “Rent Heads”. I had a bad flashback to my childhood, when my father would make me approach various sports stars for autographs after baseball, football and basketball games, but then I remembered the time Nicci waited in line all day to get into the “secret” Spiritualized show at the Echo, so I said that I would wait with her. My attempt to snap pictures of her with the cast members turned out poorly because the actors were moving too damn fast to sign autographs for everybody. Nicci said it was no big deal, she was going to see the play several more times in the next week or two. I don’t think I will be going back for seconds.

Overall Grade: B.

Les Baxter – Sabre Dance
The Almanac Singers – I Don’t Want Your Millions
Electrelane – Le Song
Stanley Turrentine – Ladyfingers

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