Jonathan Larson’s ground-breaking musical, based loosely on Puccini’s opera La Bohème opens March 6 at the Santa Clarita Performing Arts Center at College of the Canyons for a limited run.
Rent’s creator, Jonathan Larson, died suddenly the night before the off-Broadway premiere of his show. Subsequently, the show won a Pulitzer Prize, and the production was moved to Broadway in 1996 where it gained critical acclaim and won a Tony Award for Best Musical.
Rent follows a year in the lives of seven impoverished young artists struggling to survive and create in New York’s East Village under the shadow of AIDS. This musical is largely responsible for helping to increase the popularity of musical theatre amongst the younger generation. The Broadway production closed in 2008, after a 12-year run and 5,124 performances, making it the seventh longest-running Broadway show, eight years behind The Phantom of the Opera. The success of the show led to several national tours and numerous foreign productions, and in 2005, it was also adapted into a motion picture that features most of the original cast.
AIDS and both its physical and emotional complications pervade the lives of the central characters. David Kenny plays Mark, a filmmaker and the show’s narrator, who shares an industrial loft on the lower East Side with his roommate Roger (Garrett Deagon), a musician. Maureen (Michelle Reyes), is a performance artist who is in a relationship with JoAnne (Lindsay Hough), a Harvard Law School graduate. Mimi (Nikki Berra) is their downstairs neighbor with a drug problem. The cast is rounded out by Sam Hyde as Tom Collins, Charlie Nash as Angel, a street musician and Alexander Gomez as Benny, the landlord who reneges on his offer to let them live rent-free for the winter. Also featured are Melissa Joy Castro, Charlie Fecske, Allison Fox, Richie Fiene, Justin Fischer, Becky Hasquet, Brad Rennels, and Beth Ann Sweezer. The SCRT cast is under the direction of Leslie Berra, with choreography by Nancy Alterman, and vocal direction by Tom Lund.
Rent is a very adult show and is not recommended for children. It deals with alternative life styles, AIDS, drug use, homosexuality, and contains profanity and provocative choreography. There will be only six performances at the Santa Clarita Performing Arts Center at College of the Canyons on March 6, 7, 13, 14, 19, and 20, 2010.
Ticket prices are from $12 to $29 and may be obtained by calling the box office at 661-799-2702.