“There’s only this…”

Posted on June 19, 2009 by David Fick

So – to wrap up my thoughts about RENT before I move onto the next musical of the many that spin around in my mind. At any rate, I reached the point where I think I became more receptive to the show – having moved out of the realms of academia, perhaps I was less reliant on intellect and more open to a more visceral experience of RENT.

So I went along to see the South African production of the show, along with a group of thirty-odd girls from the school where I teach. Now let’s face it, the staging of the show has more than a handful of effective moments: the post-funeral fight between the main characters, the cluster of “Christmas Bells” carolers complete with rude hand gestures, the stunning journey of Mimi from her apartment down to Roger’s loft in “Out Tonight”, the table dance in “La Vie Boheme” and – most of all – the line up that is first seen in “Seasons of Love” and which is reprised to devastating effect after Angel’s death.

But there are problems with the staging – notably, the whole seems less than the sum of its parts. Partly this has to do with the often alienating manner in which the cast is directed in its relationship to the audience. On one hand, the staging is presentational, like a concert, confronting the audience with the world the show represents. On the other, there are purely representational scenes and these are woodenly staged in a faux-realistic style that just excludes the audience. After all, this is live theatre – there is no camera to allow us focus into something we can’t see. And that is a problem, I think, for an audience member who isn’t familiar with the show’s lyrics: RENT is convoluted, you have to listen to know what’s going on and this kind of staging doesn’t encourage you to connect with the show. This is dangerous is a show that is, in some senses, all about making connections.

I also felt that the multimedia aspects of the show weren’t really successful – particularly the climactic film sequence floundered in this production – and the design, with the multi-purpose sculpture as its central feature, doesn’t seem to maximize the use of space on the stage and indeed obscures some the action that occurs further upstage.

So why, with all of these problems, did I see the show three times? Because the experience confirmed my feelings that the primary problems of RENT have more to do with Michael Grief’s staging concept (handled here in the hands of original cast member Anthony Rapp) for the show than with Jonathan Larson’s text for the show. Yes, Larson’s work has its problems – the clarity of the narrative, some dodgy lyrics and so forth – but what lies at the centre of the piece is a heart that beats passionately. The show truly does make you look at your life because there’s a bit of you in each of the characters: in Mimi’s sexuality, in Roger’s insecurity, in Maureen’s passion, in Mark’s neurosis, in Joanne’s conviction, in Collins’ subversiveness and in Angel’s profound love for his friends, for life and for every moment. That’s what makes me love RENT in spite of everything: after more than a decade, when I am far away from the literal experiences of these characters there is still a message about how you measure your life. Second for second, there’s no day but today and – if you’ll forgive the sentiment and the idealism – that day is better lived when you love and you let yourself be loved in return.

Posted in Broadway, Musicals | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

“There may have been one teeny tiny spark…”

Posted on June 19, 2009 by David Fick

So how does one get from a place where you have such strong critical opinions of something to a place where you can still love it for what it is? It’s not through a process of trying; at least not in this case. With RENT having fallen in my estimation, I put the show to the back of my mind. In any event, there were other things with which I had to concern myself: the writing of my thesis musical, House of Shadows, as well as the small problem of finding work after graduation.

Then, in 2005, a film version of RENT was released. A monumental flop overseas, the film was on general release in South Africa for a week in 2006 with a few more screenings at that year’s “Out in Africa” film festival. Now the film is no masterpiece by any means. Poor direction mars several sequences in the film and the pace is sacrificed in the decision to make the narrative more accessible for people who don’t like to listen to lyrics in musicals. There are also some bad choices in the adaptation – setting the film in 1989 and the over-simplification of the plot for example. But there are some great ideas – the contextualisation of “Take Me or Leave Me” and the easy fall into dance during the “Santa Fe” subway sequence, for example – and the cast is passionate about the performances they’re delivering and the story they’re telling.

What was most surprising and pleasing was that Angel was at the absolute centre of the film despite the fact that the story ostensibly focuses on Roger and Mimi. When Mark’s film plays during “Finale B” – a moment that has never worked for me in the live staging of the musical – and the last shot is of Angel, suddenly something occurred to me that I had not considered. Perhaps the flaws of RENT were less in the text and more in Michael Grief’s original staging for Broadway, which is the version reproduced on professional stages around the world. Or perhaps both share the blame to a certain extent?

Going back to the main thing that frustrates me about the show – the ending – it occurred to me that just how manipulative the staging of this scene is, for the reasons cited in my earlier blog on the show and how reading Sarah Schulman’s book made me reconsider how I felt about the show. Making it seem as if Mimi dies is a mistake. It is all in a single gesture – when Mimi’s hand falls, the staging destroys the credibility to the show. But if – as in the film – Angel could be placed in the foreground of the material as the epitome of “La Vie Boheme”, the strong figurehead that inspires everyone else to live, to express, to communicate – then there are possibilities in the text that would allow me to make peace, to some extent, with the show as a dramatic text if not in the accepted, “definitive” staging of it.

I was beginning to become excited about RENT once more. And with the opening of the South African production of RENT imminent at the time, the answers for which I was looking were beginning to form in the recesses of my mind.

Posted in Broadway, Movies, Musicals | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

“You’re what you own…”

Posted on June 19, 2009 by David Fick

During the time I spent reading for my Honours degree in Drama a dramaturg came to work with the theatre-making students on campus. Although I was not directly involved with any of the projects she co-ordinated, I attended her seminar on dramaturgy during which she mentioned the case of Lynn Thompson, a dramaturg who had worked on RENT, as an example of how difficult it was to prove ownership of material when in this enabling role. Apparently, Thompson felt she deserved more credit (and royalties) for her contributions to the show.

I went to the library to scour through the RENT book that, until this point, had been one of my primary resources in my study of the show. On the shelf was a new book by Sarah Schulman entitled: Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America.

Schulman’s book mentions the Thompson case and alleges that some of the show’s narrative points and character beats were plagiarised from her novel, People in Trouble. It’s an interesting read and Schulman makes a strong case. Both cases were failures in terms of legal challenges to the ownership of RENT but Shulman’s book is successful in bringing into focus some criticisms of RENT that seemed to be hovering in some kind of liminality. So while the accusations of plagiarism were shocking and disturbing, what did prove valuable to me was Schulman’s discussion of the identity politics in the show. Suddenly, I was seeing things in a new light.

In the book, Schulman says:

“The message of my novel is that personal homophobia becomes social neglect, that there is a direct relationship between the two. The message of RENT is quite the opposite, that straight people are the heroic centre of the AIDS crisis.”

What did this mean to me? On one level, I had to confront the uneasiness I felt regarding the final scene in the show, when Mimi seems to die but then miraculously recovers. Now I realise that Jonathan Larson wanted to communicate a message of hope, but the way that this is realised in the text and reinforced in the staging of the show never sat well with me. But why? That was something that had always eluded me. Shulman gave me the tools, the language, the vocabulary to articulate what I was feeling:

“RENT clearly depicts a world in which heterosexual love is true love. Homosexual love exists but is inherently secondary in that it is either doomed or shallow or both.”

Warning: I am about to go to a point in time when I became extremely “political” and anti-RENT. What was once such a satisfying whole for me fell into little bits when I began to re-examine the show with new eyes. I have reconstructed this partly by looking at fragments of discussions I had during 2005 on a forum known as musicals.net and partly by delving into the shaky territory of memory.

The first thing that became problematic for me was that the only time you get to see Angel and Collins interacting as a male-male couple is in the scene where they first meet and when Angel becomes sick and dies. This visually reinforces the male-female relationship paradigm that the show, according to Schulman, places above all others. The audience feels more comfortable because the man looks like he’s with a woman therefore it is easier to accept/approve of the relationship because Angel’s “not really a man” and the audience can go away feeling very pleased with themselves for how tolerant they are when in fact their perceptions may not have been challenged at all. Schulman refers to this as the creation of a “fake, public homosexuality”.

And when Angel is sick and obviously going to die and the fact that we seem them as a male-male couple validates one of the old prejudices against gay men who have sex: they get infected by HIV and die. And because the characters are such nice people individually, the audience can feel sorry for them and feel proud of how tolerant they are because – “look, we can empathise with the plight of the gay man in a contemporary world”.

And this is all exacerbated by the fact that Mimi, who seems to die, gets a song sung to her by Roger and comes back to life. Collins wasn’t able to do this: he wasn’t able to “cover” Angel when it really counted. On some level this narrative implies that straight love is more powerful than gay love – so much so that it can reverse the course of Death. This ending also contradicts the “No Day But Today” premise of the show. Why live as if there is “no day but today”, when even death isn’t a barrier? At least if you’re straight.

I guess ultimately it is about manipulation: Mimi’s survival creates a genuine feeling of upliftment in the audience at the end of the show.

Now I did warn you that I was going to get extreme. Even reading through this now, I pause to wonder if I wasn’t being swayed by Schulman’s opinions too much. But I guess – and now it is time for another quote – that RENT had to be rent so that I could put it back together again and get to grips with the way I ultimately feel about this show.

Derek Walcott says:

“Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. The glue that fits the pieces is the sealing of the original shape.”

This was to be the next step in the journey…

Posted in Broadway, Musicals | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

“To faggots, lezzies, dykes, cross dressers too”

Posted on June 18, 2009 by David Fick

So it’s 2002, the start of my Honours year. I’m studying Drama at UCT and I’m 23 years old. I’ve been out for about 6 months and I’m fascinated by the idea of gay culture and the fact that there is are whole communities of gay people out there in the world. It’s time to choose the topic for my research paper and so I choose to look at my great passion in life, musical theatre, through a pair of eyes from which a pair of claustrophobic lenses have been ripped and settle on a topic: “Homosexual Representation in the Broadway Musical: the development of homosexual identities and relationships from Patience to RENT“.

As can be deduced from the title, this paper comprised of a series pieces of textual analysis placed against the context of the time period in which each of the selected musicals (Patience, Lady in the Dark, Hair, A Chorus Line, La Cage aux Folles, RENT) was originally produced. What was I looking for? Some kind of validation, I suppose. I say this because my analysis in this paper focused on the developmental aspect of homosexual representation through these six musicals; in retrospect, I don’t believe I was critical enough of the shortcomings that presented themselves.

Certainly, it is interesting at this time to revisit what I wrote about RENT, which I said offered “less superficial challenges to the heterosexual hegemony within the Broadway musical”. I suppose it does – but there are other issues at play here, which I will explore after this little trip into the recesses of my academic mind. What follows is an extract from my paper that deals with the issues that come to light in RENT.

Two years prior to the opening of La Cage aux Folles, the tragedy of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) began to have its effect. The first cases were reported in 1981, when the homosexual community was shattered by the horrific illness and death that affected many of their peers – in many cases people were dying in a matter of days. By 1982, the disease had become an epidemic, been named and been designated “the gay plague”. By 1984, enough was known about AIDS to formally refute this prejudice and the ongoing search for a cure began in earnest. Devastated by the personal and professional losses that were suffered, homosexuals began to implement their own war on AIDS and the perceptions that surrounded the disease. Kenrick recalls:

    As someone who worked both on and Off-Broadway during the 1980’s and 90’s, I can verify that the ongoing nightmare of AIDS did not prevent those years from being wondrously exciting for gays and lesbians in the theatre. We fought a seemingly “unbeatable foe” [and] gained a new sense of our place in the theatrical community (2001: online).

Indeed, gay theatre practitioners took up a similar type of challenge with the AIDS crisis as they had in the fight for gay identity. Working in opposition to political and public views, both commercial and non-commercial theatre spaces were filled with plays that dealt with issues related to living with the disease. And because AIDS affected everybody, the theatre that arose from this stimulus had a multi-cultural sensitivity: character lists displayed a cross-section of divergent races, genders, sexual orientations and class communities. This is what Jonathan Larson chose to represent in his AIDS musical, RENT, which he wrote in response to the large number of friends he had lost to the disease. Like Hair and A Chorus Line, RENT focuses on social issues that affect a specific community. The sub-culture that is presented in RENT is a group of bohemians in their twenties living in New York at the end of the twentieth century. Many are aspiring artists in some way: Mark narrates the show as he captures moments of the proceedings on film, Roger is a songwriter trying to write the one great song that will define him in history, Maureen is an avant-garde performance artist and so on. Homosexuality is normalised in this community – the activists in this play are all fighting for other causes. The danger inherent in this normalisation is that gay identity is identified as a fashionable trend. This is most overt when Larson includes homosexuality alongside other ‘passing fad(s)’ in the “La Vie Boheme” sequence at the end of the first act (1996: 20). This was probably not Larson’s intention, but the implications are in the text and cannot be ignored.

There are two homosexual couples in RENT: Maureen and Joanne, and Angel and Collins. The former are a multi-racial female couple. In the play, Maureen has only recently realised her lesbianism and Joanne is her first girlfriend. Joanne spends most of the musical worried that Maureen, who is flirtatious with any and every attractive person in the vicinity, will leave her. Eventually, Maureen responds to her in song:

    JUST REMEMBER THAT I’M YOUR BABY.

    TAKE ME FOR WHAT I AM
    WHO I WAS MEANT TO BE
    AND IF YOU GIVE A DAMN
    TAKE ME BABY OR LEAVE ME.

What finally cements their relationship is their acceptance of each other, their relationship and the special requirements that they will need to negotiate in their relationship. They acknowledge themselves as a lesbian couple and are willing to negotiate the specific pleasures and problems that this brings in the world of the play and in the implied story beyond that world.

The second gay couple, Angel and Collins, is textually placed in structural support of the primary relationship in the play, the heterosexual couple Roger and Mimi. All four of these characters are HIV+. The gay lovers are extensions of previous characters in the gay musical theatre canon. There is a clear basis for Angel, a Puerto Rican transvestite, in Paul from A Chorus Line, although without the guilt or shame implicit in that characterisation. Together, the couple is a younger, cross-cultural version of Georges and Albin in La Cage Aux Folles but without pseudo-farcical quality of that production. Indeed, they are given the most effective gay duet to date in musical theatre. The ‘soul’-flavoured “I’ll Cover You” begins when Angel and Collins realise that they’re more than just “a thing”:

    I THINK THEY MEANT IT
    WHEN THEY SAID YOU CAN’T BUY LOVE
    NOW I KNOW YOU CAN RENT IT
    A NEW LEASE YOU ARE, MY LOVE,
    ON LIFE – BE MY LIFE.

This sentiment is applied seriously in every aspect of their life together and, when Angel dies in the second act, beyond the limits of death when the full community echoes the emotion that motivates the song in a reprise at Angel’s memorial. Angel’s death has been a contentious issue amongst critics of the show, the general feeling of the criticism being that a gay character is killed off for the benefit of the emotional catharsis of the heterosexual theatregoing public. This is aggravated by the fact that Mimi makes a remarkable recovery after a near-death experience just prior to the final curtain. This ending is indeed one of the major weaknesses in the show, mainly because RENT gives in to the sentimentality that has been avoided prior to this event. This weakens the impact of the climactic and final lines of the play:

    I CAN’T CONTROL
    MY DESTINY
    MY ONLY GOAL
    IS JUST TO BE….

    NO DAY BUT TODAY.

Where Hair climaxed with a prayer for tomorrow – “Let the Sunshine In” – RENT closes with an endorsement for existing and living in the present.

Reading through it again, I think perhaps I wasn’t as uncritical as I remember but I do think that because of my own agenda at the time, the nature of my criticism didn’t confront the inherent narrative and representational problems within the piece, partly because my understanding of these issues wasn’t yet fully embracing or complex and partly because I wasn’t ready to delve deep into any possible flaws in something that offered me so much validation in my personal journey. But “you’ll see, boys” – everything changes with time.

Posted in Broadway, Musicals | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Soul of a Young Man

Posted on June 18, 2009 by David Fick

So I’ve been thinking about the first time I encountered RENT. It would have been midway through the year when the Tony Awards were screened on MNET – a ceremony the channel has now abandoned – on which the cast performed “Seasons of Love” and a truncated version of “La Vie Boheme”.

Now to contextualise my experience of seeing that performance on TV… I come from a not-so-little town where everything Conventional is celebrated. So being 18 years old and hearing a song that mentions “bisexuals, trisexuals, homo sapiens, carcinogens, hallucinogens, men, Pee Wee Herman” and which celebrates “days of inspiration, playing hooky, making something out of nothing” and “going against the grain” – well, it certainly sticks in your mind.

Buying cast recordings of musicals in my not-so-little hometown was also a something of a mission. Unless you were looking for The Sound of Music, Phantom of the Opera or one of the other great popular classics, it was rare to find what you were looking for. And this was way before I had access to the Internet or even knew that you could buy just about any CD you wanted from Amazon. So imagine the joy of finding the original cast recording of RENT in a small independent music store – I was ecstatic! And I rushed home to listen to a couple of hours of immensely engaging music.

So what did it mean to me? RENT told me that were was a world waiting outside of the place you grew up. A world where you had the choice to experience anything you were willing to take on. RENT made me realise that your friends can also be your family. And RENT told me that being yourself was all right. Not that any of this translated into an immediate change in my behaviour or lifestyle, but this story, to a young man, meant a chance to escape. And I do believe that if you want to experience something, if you want to achieve something, that you have to be able to visualise it first. So I guess this was the start of my visualisation.

Over the next few years, RENT would remain present in my life: I remember painting sets with the music blaring in the background, trying to figure out what it was that Maureen did during “Over the Moon” and watching friends perform extracts for various practical exams. Things would change when I graduated and moved away from home to study for an Honours degree in Drama; with my critical claws sharpened and a lot of conventional baggage discarded, the time came when I began to re-evaluate what I had once accepted without question….

Posted in Broadway, Musicals, Tony Awards | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Everything is RENT

Posted on June 18, 2009 by David Fick

What is it about RENT? I’ve loved it, disdained it, watched it, been moved by it, been left cold by it, left it behind, returned to it and loved it all over again. I’ve sat for hours with the CD analysing the score, read books about the show, even written papers about it during my post-graduate studies in musical theatre – all in the hope that the secret of my tumultuous relationship with RENT will be revealed.

The South African production of RENT in 2007 played received mixed reviews and to less than full houses. The production was passionate if not perfect and was marketed as a controversial musical that “changed Broadway”. This was possibly not the best way to promote the show to South African audiences and I guess the poor houses proved that point.

Looking back to that marketing strategy, I don’t know that RENT changed the face of the musical theatre industry; it did, to a certain extent, create a space for an alternative, contemporary voice in which the mainstream musical could sing. And yes – the controversy is there: in the AIDS-related themes, in the depiction of homosexual characters and relationships on stage, in the use of language, in the in-your-face style of performance that the show employs.

But those things are not what RENT is about. RENT is about “La Vie Boheme” – the bohemian life. Everything else is secondary; everything is mediated through the tinted lenses through which these characters see their existence and the credo that is at the bottom line of this lifestyle is “No Day But Today”. As a theatrical text, RENT at its strongest and most vital when it remembers this. When it gets lost in its narrative complexities or resorts to blatant emotional manipulation, the show is less successful.

But more about that later: for now, it is time to start thinking again. To start unlocking the secret of this show once again, more than a decade after I was first exposed to the material. And maybe this time, I’ll find some more conclusive answers.

Posted in Broadway, Musicals | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Gwen and Chita do CHICAGO!

Posted on June 17, 2009 by David Fick

Here’s a rare look at the original production of Chicago.

This first set of clips is from an out-of-town tryout, shot by Fred Ebb himself (as legend has it), so we get to see some stuff that never made it into the final version of the show!

This second clip features Gwen Verdon and Chita Rivera doing “Nowadays/Hot Honey Rag” on The Howard Cossell Show, also in 1975.

This is a real treat to see… but can you imagine what we’d have on record today if YouTube had existed in 1975?!!

Posted in Broadway, Musicals | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The BEST Sondheim Diva

Posted on June 16, 2009 by David Fick

This man has created great work for some great divas and others have performed his work to great acclaim: Ethel Merman, Chita Rivera, Donna Murphy, Joanna Gleason, Elaine Stritch, Bernadette Peters, Maria Friedman and Judi Dench are just a few.

But is there anyone that beats Angela Lansbury, for her hat trick of Anyone Can Whistle, Gypsy and Sweeney Todd? She’s just one of the best there is. Take a look:

Everything’s coming up roses, indeed.

Posted in Broadway, Musicals | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

101 DALMATIANS II

Posted on June 14, 2009 by David Fick

101 Dalmatians II is one of the better Disney DTV sequels. While it’s not in the same league as the original, it’s also nowhere near as abysmal as some of the sequels have been. The team behind this film at least tries to match the tone set by the original and that’s mainly why the film works – even when the narrative isn’t quite as focused as it could be.

But the highlight for me is the appearance of Will Young on the soundtrack as he sings “Try Again”, underscoring a montage of failed attempts on the part of Thunderbolt and Lucky to get the attention of the British press with their “heroic” events. Here’s the video, courtesy of YouTube:

While I was looking for the music video, I also managed to find a video of Will Young offering some words of wisdom on the message of the song.

Very Disney, indeed!

Posted in Animation, Disney, Movies | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Original London SWEENEY

Posted on June 14, 2009 by David Fick

It is amazing what you can find on YouTube. It never ceases to amaze me. Today: two clips from the short-lived original London production of the Stephen Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd Not the greatest quality, but interesting to see….

I rather like Sheila Hancock in the clip of “A Little Priest”, but Denis Quilley just doesn’t seem to have the fire of Len Cariou or George Hearn.

Andrew Wadsworth, who starts off singing the reprise of “Johanna” in the second clip sounds stunning – and what you can hear of Mandy More’s Johanna is also beautiful. I liked Quilley much better here, although there’s something not quite right about the rhythm of his throat-slitting. But that could just be because the closeness of the camera. I think he’s super in the finale when Sweeney and Lovett rise out of the stage to single the final ballad.

Some further browsing around reveals that the London production added “The Beggar Woman’s Lullaby” (which some say give the Beggar Woman’s true identity away too soon) and cut the “Parlor Songs” (which are loads of fun – “Sweet Polly Plunket” is a delightful little song). I wonder what this iteration of the original Harold Prince production was like. It only ran 157 performances, so clearly the Brits didn’t take to it….

Still, I think Prince did a fantastic job on that first production. Seeing it as recorded on the television broadcast of the 1982 US touring company was an experience that I found completely thrilling. People often criticize that TV filming because it’s a mere shadow of the brilliant original production. I get that – but if that’s the case, oh my goodness, what a brilliant shadow it is.

Posted in Broadway, Musicals | Tagged , | Leave a comment