RENT Live! (Catching Up)

RENT Live! aired on FOX on January 27.  I think we were out that night seeing our favorite local band, so I recorded it and told my sister we could get together and watch it later.  We finally did that this weekend, along with two other friends.  This review a little late to the game, but here we are.

As it turns out, Brennin Hunt, the guy playing Roger, broke his ankle during the dress rehearsal.  As a result, most of the RENT Live! was actually a pre-recorded version of the dress rehearsal.  That was unfortunate.  They did the final scene live, and they included the original Broadway cast members, so that was exciting.  Everyone looked and sounded great.  Poor Brennin.  During that last scene, he sat on the table with his foot in a huge cast and propped on a chair, but he still sang the heck out of Your Eyes.  Way to persevere!

Overall, I thought the casting of Brennin as Roger and Vanessa Hudgens as Maureen was perfect.  The other cast members were good too, but these two stood out for me.  Both of them did so well in their roles.  Brennin is quite easy on the eyes and his voice was great.  (Incidentally, I just looked him up on IMDb, and he was a contestant on The Voice.)

There was some pitchy-ness in some of the songs, and some of the supporting cast members were off in pivotal songs like Will I? and Seasons of Love.  I had to keep in mind that this was a dress rehearsal and perhaps if they had really done it live, they would have been pitch perfect.

I noticed early on that some lyrics were changed, mostly due to cursing, so I figured that they'd probably change a lot in La Vie Boheme, and I wondered if they'd do the sex song (Contact).  In La Vie Boheme, Maureen did not moon the businessmen and they changed "dildos," but left in everything else including, "mucho masturbation," "to sodomy," "to marijuana!" and, "to S&M!" --that surprised me!  And they did do Contact, but it was condensed and didn't have all of the sexually suggestive choreography that the stage show has.

I've lost count of how many times we've seen RENT (maybe 20?!), but I'll add this one to the list.  Overall, I thought it was enjoyable.  I was glad to hear the music again, and I've been listening to the original soundtrack all week.  As we were watching the show, I told my friends that I was having a hard time controlling myself and not singing all the songs to them.  Now I sing away!

Call me a convert

Ever since Hamilton came out in 2016 I've resisted it and really had no interest in seeing it.  The hype was too much.  The prices for tickets were (and ARE) outrageous.  As I recall, I was disappointed with Lin-Manuel's first show, In the Heights, though I now realize from reading an old blog post about it that I didn't hate In the Heights at all, and in fact I wrote that I really liked it a lot.  Oops!  I've been misremembering the experience all this time!  My bad.  It's just that I LOVED Jersey Boys so much more on that trip.  A n y w a y, the point is that I've been actively trying not to see Hamilton.

When tickets went on sale for it at the Kennedy Center in DC, it was all over the news.  People stood in line at 6am, people online waited for hours.  I wanted nothing to do with it.

Then I got an email from a good friend of mine that she and her husband got tickets.  Did I want one?  I really hemmed and hawed over this.  I didn't want to disappoint my friend or end up in a place where I had to pretend I liked it to not hurt her feelings.  I finally agreed to go, figuring I'd go with an open mind, and it would be fun to spend time with her and her husband.  She offered a second ticket to my sister, so it was going to be a fun foursome.

Then!  One day, my friend and her husband got same-day $10 tickets to see the show!  They have a daily lottery and they won!  So, now they had an additional two tickets to sell, and my parents accepted them.  My dad said the price was substantially cheaper than what he'd been seeing on the site.  (My folks were looking for tickets as a way to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.)

A coworker recommended I listen to the soundtrack ahead of time, check out the lyrics, and maybe do a little reading on Alexander Hamilton for background.  I did that this week, and I have to admit--when I put on the soundtrack, I was hooked after the first two songs.

Last night, we saw the show.  It was more than I expected.  The cast was fantastic.  The staging is simple but there were a few scenes that really got to me...the way they used part of the stage that moved in a circle and the actors' slow motion actions were really affecting.  It was just beautiful.

I've definitely come around 180 degrees on this show and would like for everyone to see it.  Deb and I talked last night about ticket prices being so high and how prices are prohibitive for people who should see it, particularly immigrants and young kids of color who can see people that look like them playing such important roles, and get a history lesson to boot.  I hope eventually things will level out with the show and prices will drop.  It's a shame they're so high.

I had recorded a show on PBS, Hamilton's America, that I watched this morning.  It shows the evolution of the show from when Lin-Manuel picked up the biography by Ron Chernow and how he could see a hip hop scenario with the story, to when it went to Broadway, to when the cast performed at the White House.  When you see the process and get an understanding into how Lin-Manuel came up with the whole thing--it's really astounding.  What an immense talent he has.  Much respect.

A Bronx Tale

My family and I spent Christmas 2016 in New York City and had the opportunity to see A Bronx Tale on Broadway.  I'd seen the movie years ago, and loved it. It starred Robert DeNiro and Chazz Palminteri.  I didn't realize when I'd seen the movie that Chazz wrote it and that it was based on his real life until I read all that info in the Playbill.

A Bronx Tale originated as a one-man show that Chazz did off-Broadway, then the movie came along, and now it's a Broadway musical.  We really enjoyed the show, which is a coming of age story about a kid (Chazz) who struggles between the influences of his blue-collar father, a bus driver, and the richest man in the neighborhood, who's a mobster.  In the movie, Chazz played the mobster, and DeNiro played the father.  The musical was great and is being compared to a mix of The Jersey Boys and West Side Story.  I can see that, because there's a subplot where Chazz falls for a black girl--this was in the 60s and interracial dating wasn't really accepted by either side.

We heard that Chazz was in the audience the night we saw it, but we didn't see him.  Talk about pressure for the actors!  They all did great though.

As an aside, after the show, we made our way over to Rockefeller Center to see the tree.  That was quite the scene, but it's always fun to see.  You just have to have patience.  I know we're long past Christmas, but here are a couple of pics:

Window at Saks Fifth Avenue - dreaming of The Nutcracker