Love the show.
Of course, I saw it first on Broadway, with the entire original cast – Adam Pascal as Roger, Jesse L. Martin as Tom Collins, and the amazing Daphne Rubin-Vega as Mimi. Oh, and Idina Menzel’s incomparable Maureen.
I constantly live that I-love-music-but-sing-only-in-the-key- of-off disappointment; musicals don’t increase it much. I remember leaving the production absolutely stunned, and having wiped tears from my eyes several times… er. that is, I would have wiped tears, if I weren’t such a tough, manly bastard.
If the show seems dated, perhaps it’s only because when it was written, AIDS was still a virtual death sentence, even with AZT – while we still don’t have a cure, the panoply of drugs we can throw at it allow an AIDS victim with financial resources to maintain an existence - one dominated by pills, yes, but still LIVING.
That simply wasn’t true then, and, frankly, for starving “artists” and the homeless, it is still a death sentence. If Rent seems dated, perhaps you’re setting your social sights too high.
Chronos, a play - or an opera - can be moving and compelling without your liking the characters. Do you think Don Giovanni is a figure to be admired, seducing women and driving them to suicide? Is Salome to be applauded when she demands that Herod kill John the Baptist? Or closer to this point – were Marcel, Rupert, and Mimi any more loveable than Mark, Roger, and Mimi? Was Schunard any more morally straight than Angel?
As to your specific objections – their landlord tried to break the deal he made with them - a former roommate of theirs, he promised them a rent-free year after he bought the building. It is this they protest, not the general idea of paying rent. And by “bank robbery” you mean Collins’ rewiring the ATM at the Food Emporium to give “anyone with the code” money, yes? It’s hardly an act of selflessness, I grant - but it’s not “robbery” either. Finally, it was a neighbor of Benny & Alison that hired Angel to get rid of the dog, and all she did was play music – the dog unexpectedly jumped to its death. While she took credit for it, she didn’t kill it.
The bottom line is that you’re not necessarily “supposed to identify with these idiots.” You are, however, supposed to feel some empathy for what they’re going through: Roger, afflicted with AIDS through no fault of his own; Mimi, in love with a guy who’s got so much emotional baggage he can’t see how much he loves her in return; Joanne and Maureen, experiencing the topsy-turvy changes inherent in many relationships and trying desperately to hang on to one another; Mark, who is the one that will survive all this, which carries with it its own guilt – and no sympathy from those that are dying… and Tom & Angel, who find true love only to lose their relationship to the roaring lion of death that is AIDS.
There’s plenty to identify with. It’s being human.
