RENT

Do high school English classes still read Romeo and Juliet then West Side Story, and assign that "compare and contrast" essay? Of course the inserted question is do high school English classes actually assign reading at all? My kids still slogged through Great Expectations and Dostoyevsky, but many classes watched videos instead of reading books. I wonder if the video of Miss Haversham's wedding cake is half as creepy as the one I've imagined for over thirty years.

I grew up listening to Broadway musical LPs and 78rpm recordings. I read the synopsis on the record jacket, and imagined a play in my head while lounging on the living room carpet. It was a primitive existence, I know. Sometimes I would go into my cave and paint pictures on the wall by torch light...


In high school my best friend was obsessed with the musical "Grease". We listened to her LP of the Broadway show over and over until we could sing along with all the words. She told me about the show she saw in New York, but I mostly made up my imaginary production. When we saw a touring Broadway production at Lincoln's Pershing Auditorium, it was great fun, but we did not sing along. I never did see the Olivia Newton John movie version. That was probably because I was so disappointed in the Julie Andrew's "Sound of Music" movie compared with the touring Broadway show I had seen with my grandma at Lincoln's old Stuart Theater.

The newspapers are filled with reviews and discussions of movie musicals this week with the opening of "RENT". I will add my two cents worth! I got free passes to a preview screening Monday night because I vaguely knew the play was based on Puccini's "La Boheme". I wanted to do the old "compare and contrast" essay. It's a sickness. Post Lincoln East High School Essay Stress Disorder, we'll call it.

Beyond "La Boheme", I didn't know much about "RENT" except that the Broadway musical was very popular. I was sort of busy in the mid-90s being a single mom, teaching art, sewing costumes for childrens' plays, and trying to pay rent. Guess I missed that the musical was about AIDS and junkies. Didn't realize the screening would be filled with high school students belonging to a sort of RENT cult, way beyond our "Grease" obsession. They were pouring out of the cars in the cineplex parking lot, then popping their trunks for more friends to jump out.

Because it was a free screening, we sat in the theater for an hour plus before the show, through singing contests, radio dj appearances, and t-shirt giveaways. We had a looooonnnnnngggg time to observe the RENT fanatics around us. So much energy, earnestness, insecurity, hormones, enthusiasm, and need to push against authority! Within five minutes I had a raging pep rally headache. Thank heaven the audience couldn't stomp on the bleachers.

Bleachers. Now it connects. Lincoln East won the state class A basketball tournament in 1971. My friends and I were rabid supporters of the Spartans, but anti-rah rah Pep Club. We called ourselves Hardhats, and wore real metal construction hardhats painted in the school colors. We stomped on bleachers and yelled ourselves hoarse for the Spartans. I even made surprisingly accurate continuous line drawings and wire sculptures of the individual team members. Fanaticism. Energy. Enthusiasm. Insecurity. Rebellion. Earnestness. Hormones, even.

Not knowing the Broadway show or the music, "RENT" had to stand on its own merits for me. These are my beefs:
1. Apparently the songs have lyrics. We couldn't tell. The music is very loud, and no words are discernible. At "La Boheme" there are supertitles to read, and this movie needs them, too.
2. The cast looked like a reunion of "Saved by the Bell". Too old for their parts, but too scrubbed into fresh-faced perkiness. They don't look urban, let alone like poor, starving, ill, junkie artists. Reminded me of those old dancing Dr. Pepper t.v. commercials. Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?
3. I was not enticed to give a damn about any of the characters. Not intrigued, enthralled, empathetic. I pretty much wanted to slap all of them, and tell them to quit pretending. They aren't adults. They aren't artists. They aren't adolescents. They aren't suffering. They aren't shocking. They aren't making a statement. They don't even pretend to look cold.
4. The set looks like a plastic sanitized-for-your-convenience slum theme amusement park. You must be this tall to ride this ride.

I did like the dancing. I got one tiny lump in my throat remembering a real life friend and his horrible AIDS suffering.

Jesse McKinley's NYTimes search for the RENT locales in the East Village made me realize the movie is a nostalgic version of a time, place, and issue. Nostalgia and edginess can't coexist.