Rent

Campbelltown Theatre Group's 2014 season kicked off to a good start with its production of Rent. There's much to like about this production.

Rob Thompson's choreography is spot on and always enhances the scene (good to see a choreographer who knows when NOT to choreograph). MD Craig Davidson cooks a really tight band and gets great harmonies from the cast. First time director Ruth Smith does a good job moving the show along.

The static set and costumes go for drab and drearies, which helps emphasise the surroundings and predicament of the characters. The gratuitous group sex scene was handled well and didn't embarrass the audience and cast.

The cast are uniformly solid but for my money the showstopper was Brendan Cascarino as Angel, closely followed by Ash Toweel as his partner Collins and Hannah Hyeronimus as the fickle Musetta-esque Maureen. And bravo to everyone for dressing in heavy Winter gear in a hot and humid theatre, and still convincing us they were feeling the chill.

I felt opening night's show was uneven: peaks of "really great" were followed by troughs of "just OK" (but never bad). It was at these times that I felt some of the cast were holding back, instead of consistently knocking us out with their passion. I felt there were also some small incidents of focus being lost, so if you didn't know the story you would miss a plot point. With the exception of Angel and Collins, I wasn't entirely convinced of the truth of the relationships between the other lovers.

There was a tech issue with the mics, making everyone sound woolly and fuzzy, despite it being obvious the singers were clearly enunciating their words. I was told this problem cropped up only that night and was a one-off. None of the above issues are endemic to this production and, now that the cast had a chance to play to a real audience, should be gone by the next performance.

Peter Novakovich