It was never going to be easy. With its almost entirely sung rock-opera score, its mature themes and language, 1990s punchlines and status…
It was never going to be easy.
With its almost entirely sung rock-opera score, its mature themes and language, 1990s punchlines and status as a cult phenomenon, « Rent » has become one of the hardest musicals to pull off. And it’s even harder to do on family-friendly broadcast television in 2019.
Fox’s live version of the Broadway musical about starving artists living in New York during the AIDS epidemic was disadvantaged from the moment it was announced. The choice a marked contrast to the network’s previous musicals, the delightful « Grease Live! » and the cringe-worthy « A Christmas Story Live! »
And things for « Rent » were made ever worse when, just a day before the show was supposed to go on, one of the cast members broke his foot, forcing the network to air a Frankenstein of a show with substantial amount of pre-recorded material from Saturday’s rehearsal during the hyped « live » broadcast.
The result made the best of a very bad situation. It’s theater after all; the show must go on. But the rehearsal performance combined with other problems – dizzying staging and camera work, a too-loud audience, awkward lines and lyrics substituted for curse words – made it difficult for « Rent » to, well, sing.
