Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 72

B3 Sure Bet? The prize-winning moves to Broadway THEATER REVIEW As 'ty RENT Musical by Jonathan Larson directed by Michael Greif With Anthony Rapp Adam Pascal Daphne Rubin-Vega kkna Menzel Taye Diggs Fred Walker Jesse Martin Wilson Jermaine Heredia Music direction by Tan Wei sets by Paul Clay costumes by Angela Wendt choreography by Marlies Yearby Hghts by Blake Burba Nededander Theatre 41st Street west of Broadway everyone else will says the Harvard-educated Hudlin I think the assumption that something might be over the heads is exactly why there are so many timid lukewarm films coming out of Hollywood these days from the Midwest and so when people speak contemptuously of that so-called audience between New York and LA I say hey a lot hipper than you give them credit Hudlin who works with his older brother Warrington on various movie and tele- vision productions like their HBO com-edy-fanatasy anthology decided to take on White because it was such a departure from his previous two films was very successful I was offered every house-rap-hip-hop movie in the he says when came along I thought Great This is a huge difference in content and subject in every way So after that' became successful I thought Wow! Now I really have to find something ting edges in the culture that nobody ever saw before Instead his gift and it was an immense and essential one was to make downtown understandable to uptown without betraying either sensibility He also could write smart lyrics and tough eclectic pop for the mouths of different characters to pace with rhythmic propulsion to move action along through song On second hearing the best of the score is even more ingratiating a fact that makes the inclusion of lesser numbers that much more of a disappointment The best of the 33 numbers includes Song the eerily haunting and prescient ballad in which the HIV-positive musician Roger (Adam Pascal) sings about making a contribution before he dies The filmmaker and narrator Mark (Anthony Rapp) and his new girlfriend (Fredi Walker) compare notes endearingly in The heroic drag queen Angel (the remarkable Wilson Jermaine Heredia) and his cyber-genius lover Tom (Jesse Martin) ding together in a wonder- By Linda Winer STAFF WRITER A HEN OPENED downtown at the tiny New York Theater Workshop in February these three things were dear: It was the first original breakthrough rock musical since Jonathan Larson who died of an aortic aneurysm after the final dress rehearsal was at 35 fast on his way to becoming the crucial miming link a genuine Great Young Hope and synthesizer to popularize new sensibilities for old-time Broadway And someone not in mourning needed to cut at least a half-hour of the most emotionally redundant and or overly slick andor patently sentimental material to prune and shape it into the important show it obviously deserved to be Well all that is still true which will be plenty for most but could have been more which opened virtually unchanged last night at the Nederlander atre now has the Pulitzer Prize a major record deal movie suitors and wince ra ENCE which Hudlin says is in a way my first movie about race Well let me be more accurate not really a movie about race about salesmanship The product is boxing and the angle of the pitch is Any problems with doing satire? is one of my favorite says Hudlin Well what about making the central character Sultan such a scoundrel? he's appealing in the same way as the Corleones in the movies that same electricity that comes with power And people love Samuel Jack-son who dominates just by being there -And fa ce it we like villains more than heroes We like the Joker more than we like And as with the trilogy Hudlin says movie is basically a metaphor for how business gets done in America at all angles at all costa Plus a lot funnier" portedly its own boutique (If going to make a gritty poor-the- of Breath a ter musical that comes out against selling out you should be careful how soon you are perceived to be standing in line for glamor-shots behind the cast of The Nederlander a shunned house considered to be on the side of 42nd Street has been spiffed up and made user friendly for what will no doubt be long-term renters As we admire the newly distressed walls faux-leopard carpets in the lobby decorative spots of chain-link fence and Starbucks at the concession stand we try not to feel we have entered an East Village theme park important is what is onstage it? and that still pumps a sense of downtown culture to Broadway like an IV into a dehydrated invalid Michael Greif runic production has been enlarged for big theater but the director has wisely kept the same proportions and involving re- lationship between stage and house Paul set remains a huge dark rectangle with folding chairs metal scaffolds a junk-pile sculpture and long folding table There is still a pulsing combo at one side Although the thought of turning Angela Wendt's coa- tumes into a fashion trend is truly horrifying her clothes are the same perfectly selected combination of flea-market desperation and shit chic The cast is still terrific and unlike all those shows with their doggedly conscientious multi-ethnic diversity this one really does look like New York As everyone already knows Larson loosely patterned his stoiy on the characters best known from though except for a bit of now and then the opera is incidental to the experience Instead he sweetly and effectively took all the glorious agonies of defiant youth the nihilism and idealism terror and heat arrogance and confusion then catapulted them into our veiy specific nightmares of bad drugs and plague the everyday contradictions of cell phones and squalor gentrificatioo and AZT beepers cyberspace exploiters and philosophers squeegee men and zoning boards Larson did not write the most original rock music ever hear he was a theater man not a rock star just like the men who made Nor did he see cut- by Jama Mum Carol Bonn hard not to be old in the conventional sense that we overcompensate Like that octogenarian I saw on TV who chose skydiving as a birthday present Or the friend who just completed a book about her five weeks in a remote village in Nepal that took three days to walk to And that was the easy part of the journey Or the guy who runs an extra mile for every year that passes Inactivity certainly is not a goal of old age to which I aspire but there has to be midpoint between all and nothing For now the pendulum may have swung too far to the side And the use of getting older if you still have to compete with yourself prove yourself and raise a sweat? If going to race with the rats you might as well stay young In the least you can compromise did He told have Montana but at least going to get a German shepherd sixty-four years old and I have one good dog left in To like having a horse in the ful duet about shelter Cover You" Mimi the heroine addict and sex-kitten dancer (Daphne Rubin-Vega) crawls along the bannister and growls restlessly that she wants to go Tonight" And Maureen (Idina Menzel) the performance artist protesting the homeless eviction still does her unexpectedly whimsical the with irresistible anger and humor There is more too much more as the climaxes cancel one another out instead of build Greif has shaped the piece a bit more and seems to have done some small cutting and pasting for Broadway but not enough We still are crazy about the piece and are delighted that it will be around for a long time was supposed to be the promising beginning of Jonathan Larson's contribution to Broadway however and not a shrine How tragic that we look forward to what he will do next Marilyn Goldstein can be reached at Newsday 235 Pinewlawn Rd Melville NY 11747-4250 or by e-mail at marigolds aolcom JL -uj nr -yj- i-f.