RENT

The wonderful thing about RENT is that it is a story about down-and-outs that is uplifting, a story about despair that is full of hope, a story about destitution and death that life-affirming. This ambiguity is not lost on the cast of the current Kyneton Theatre Company production as the young cast erupts on stage in an explosion of singing dancing energy tinged with great poignancy and pain.

Excluded from their traditional home, Kyneton’s iconic Bluestone Theatre, while the Shire Council dithers over much-needed renovations, and making the best of the less than perfect environment, the young director, cast and crew transform the Kyneton Secondary College Hall into a rough facsimile of a music theatre and stage this complex and compelling piece with vigour and panache.

Rent is not an easy show to stage in ideal circumstances, with its large cast, phrenetic action, virtually non-stop music and multiple storylines, and director Melanie Burlak has done a remarkable job within the restricted space of telling the story of a group of bohemian friends trying to survive in the unforgiving world of Lower East Side New York in the last years of the millennium. She also did the choreography, which manages to exhibit an athleticism and excitement which belie the miniscule area she has to work with.

Loosely based on Puccini’s La Boheme, the title “rent” refers both to the imperative of the penniless artist to find somewhere to live, and to the fact that the lives of these creative young people are rent apart by love, by drugs, by their need to express themselves, by the arrival of AIDS in their midst, and by their dislocation from “respectable society”.

This is an ensemble performance of great ebullience and precision. The thirty-odd cast members take you on a heart-wrenching and foot-tapping musical and emotional journey. The singing of the principals was authoritative and compelling and the chorus work was inspiring. The pace and energy did not flag from beginning to end and the complicated logistics of moving such a large cast on to, around in and then off the performance area were flawless. The Musical Director Kate Taylor did an excellent job with the accompaniment, both in the exuberant up-beat numbers and the quieter moments of pure magic.

There were no weak links in this production. Jess Ryan in the central role of Mimi charmed the audience with her compelling combination of raunchiness and vulnerability. Ryan Ireland as the transvestite Angel made the part his own in an endearingly cheeky performance. Benjamin Prewer as the struggling musician Roger sang with great strength and emotional intensity, which didn’t always carry over into his acting, which sometimes lacked a sense of connectedness.

In one of the great tragedies of the theatre, the principal creator of this wonderful concoction, Jonathon Larson, after struggling for seven years to get the work written and produced, died suddenly on the eve of the opening night. He never knew that the show would go on to run for 5,123 performances on Broadway, gross over $280 million, win four Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize, tour the world and 17 years later find an audience in this vibrant Central Victorian town that punches above its weight artistically. If there was an afterlife, which we all know there isn’t, Larson would be gazing down with great pleasure at this production.

Ian Robinson

Images: Benjamin Prewer and Jess Ryan as Roger Davis and Mimi Marquez and Tim Francis as Mark Cohen.