Rent, Hope Mill Theatre Manchester, review: a poignant window on a vanished era
The most important American musical of the Nineties, Rent gave voice to the struggle and sadness, and also the hope and resilience, of poor, sexually liberated young New Yorkers trying to live la vie boheme amid the ravages of Aids.
Sadly, its composer Jonathan Larson (inspired by Puccini and his own starving artist experiences) didn’t live to see its award-winning success – he died suddenly ahead of its first off-Broadway preview in 1996. In a twist of irony, this superb, slick (if perhaps overly glossy) revival by Luke Sheppard at Manchester’s inspiring fringe powerhouse – the Hope Mill – survived only a few performances before lockdown forced it shut.
Watching the production, via a smartly shot recording made at its closing night, helps salvage and support all that effort. It further provides a poignant window on a vanished era – and a bygone generation – but equally also demonstrates how everything goes in cycles.
Set between two Christmases, the show’s well-known soulful anthem – Seasons of Love – reflects on the year just gone by, wistfully marvelling at the brevity of life and the need to seize the day. Shiver at that, perhaps - and there are eerily pertinent allusions to the “virus”. Some of the lines might even have been specially written for 2020: “They’ve closed everything real down.. and replaced it all with lies and rules and virtual life.”
At its West End premiere in 1998, the show struck me as overwhelming in the wrong way – too loud, too long, too laboured. There’s no getting away from the score’s incessant quality – it’s breathlessly busy. But the intimate dimensions of this low-rent space feel more suited to the spirit Larson was after. The impossible dreams, impatient yearnings and affirmative emotions acquire a pressure-cooker quality – accentuated by the tight manoeuvres of Tom Jackson Greaves’s largely non-tactile choreography.
Rent demands being seen in the flesh but abundant vitality still makes the leap out of time-capsuled circumstance. There’s clarity and nuance here to the rapid dialogue and fevered lyrics, so your engagement stays high, even when the music slides towards the generic, or the characters grate. In its bold, arresting shifts into different musical grooves you can see how Lin-Manuel Miranda, a fan (making his film-directing debut with Larson’s Tick, Tick… Boom!), got to Hamilton.
Though it’s a textbook ensemble effort, the camerawork allows individual talents their moment: Tom Francis, alluringly brooding as a reclusive songwriter, Dom Hartley-Harris terrific as an anarchist professor who falls for Alex Thomas-Smith’s flamboyant drag-queen; there’s fine work too from Millie O’Connell milking a toe-curling performance art number. All told, there’s enough action, noise and passion to compensate, just about, for the many drab weeks behind and ahead of us. Try it.
Available until Dec 20; hopemilltheatre.co.uk
