Stage Fright

Few, if any, large scale musicals will appeal to young people as much as the forthcoming production of Rent which opens at Dublin's Olympia on July 19th.

And not just because, to quote the blurb, it's "about being young in New York, being brave and being scared, being in love and being in trouble, having hope for today and faith for tomorrow."
The musical also fuses rock, pop, rhythm 'n' blues and soul and, to quote the blurb again, is a "rock rewrite of La Boheme, in which tuberculosis has become HIV and Puccini's Paris has become New York's Alphabet City."
For me, the hype may be justified. Certainly, director Phil Willmot, is determined to make this Dublin production "as much of an event" as the show he first saw in London. Not only that, he would have refused to work on the project, he says, unless he could make it "markedly different and more relevant to Dublin now, and to today" than either of the productions that won nearly every kind of award in London and on Broadway.
"It's four years since it first opened and if they'd have asked me to just re-create either of those productions I'd have said 'no', so this is the first time they've allowed Rent to be totally re-staged" he says. "It will take the best things from the Broadway and London productions but be totally fresh for Dublin.
That's what excites me. It must still pack an emotional punch and be about where we're at now. And this has got to be one of the best casts it's had. We saw thousands of people and kept searching till we got it right. So it's a mixture of people from the original West End cast, people from Belfast, Dublin, an incredible mix of people who are all bringing their viewpoints and perspectives to it. Also, some of the cast are really quite young, 17 and so."
The energy of the latter would be essential, one imagines, to offset the potentially distressing aspects of the play. Rent, after all, was written by the 35 year old Jonathan Larson, who fell ill during rehearsals and died the night the musical opened in New York. It also doesn't draw back when it comes to addressing subjects such as AIDS, drugs, homosexuality.
"The fact that Jonathan died before Rent was really completed is part of the power behind it all," Willmot suggests."It's still got a lot of rough edges. It's not glib, like most musicals. The story and the relationships between these six people are very real and rough. None of the edges has been smoothed down. Jonathan never took the safe option with things."
Probably because he knew he was dying?
"Perhaps. And maybe that's why it makes no apologies for itself. It is what it is. The way people treat each other, in particular, has no gloss at all. And Rent never patronises its audience. The absolute message of it is no day like today which, in a way, is simplistic, but because he gives you such complex stories and characters, it stops that descending into base simplicity."
Or despair. Because by the end of the show, spirits are sent soaring, it seems. One American critic, for example, said "Larson's music is full of power, and it lingers long after the curtain call, from the belting 'Take Me Or Leave Me' to the glorious ensemble anthem, 'Season Of Love'.
This aspect of Rent particularly appeals to Phil Willmot.
"You do leave the theatre feeling very inspired," he says."But then this was the first time, probably since Jesus Christ, Superstar, where someone had written a musical directly for people in their twenties and thirties, which directly reflects their experience. And it is tremendously powerful to see that on stage for the first time."
Rent also will prove "controversial", Willmot claims, specifically in terms of its depiction of street life.
"Well, the way it presents those gay characters makes absolutely no apologies for their behaviour. There is no way that they have to explain themselves. These people just are. Also, the characters who are on drugs just are and there's no preaching about that.
Instead, Rent just takes for
granted the intelligence of an
audience that will, no doubt, know that maybe even they themselves take drugs and experiment with their sexuality. Rent, in the end, really takes all those subjects on board."