Thursday, February 23, 2006
Living in America at the end of the millennium
I think that RENT is my lucky show, since this is the second time I've been able to see it live. In the front row. For $20. Yeah. Pretty sweet, hey?
Jen and I spent the day ticking off some more items on her to-do list, like going to FAO Schwartz (and seeing the "Big" piano, as well as a life-sized, $15,000 stuffed elephant), hailing a cab, and seeing a show. Rent offers a rush seating lottery--a couple of hours before the show, you put your name in a draw for up to 2 tickets at $20 each, and then they draw the names at 6:00. Mine was the second name called, so we got our two front-row seats, and voila! There we were.
Have I mentioned how much I love this show? Seriously... I've seen it twice live, seen the movie once, and have listened to the soundtrack more times than I can count, and every time, I love it a little more. And the movie came out on dvd on Tuesday, so if anyone wants to buy me a present... (hint, hint)
Every time, though, I get something new out of it--a different spin on a theme or relationship or something, or there's a different moment than the last time I saw it, or I catch the emphasis on a different line in a song, or something.
It's interesting, though. When I saw Fame twice, the two shows were completely different--I saw the North American tour in Saskatoon, and then I saw the London production, and even though they were the same script, they were very different shows. The characters had been directed differently, the set was totally different, some of the choreography was different, and the directors had chosen to highlight different things, among other things. And I, being the geek that I am, wrote seven pages of comparisons after I saw the London show. Of course, that was all in my journal that was stolen out of my truck later that summer.
Point is, though, that Rent has much more continuity. The choreography in each production (including, for the most part, the movie) was the same; the two sets were the same; the costuming was very nearly the same; the direction was the same... of course there were differences in the ways that the actors interpreted their characters, but for the most part, I was seeing the same show tonight that I saw in Calgary two years ago. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing--it's just a different approach, and one that has obviously worked.
There are even certain physical standards for each character, because, for the most part, each actor for each character in each of the three casts looked very similar to the others. It reminds me of something Cindy told us in our theatre history class (or maybe I read it in a Theatre Alberta newsletter... in any case...): When a play is private domain (which is until 100 years after the playwright's death), there can be certain restrictions and limitations on the ways that it can be cast. For instance, they can stipulate certain ethnicities, or no switching genders of certain (or any) characters, and so on. So, it just makes me wonder if the physical stipulations and all the very specific staging, costuming, choreography, etc notes are those specific provisos on the rights, or if that's just the way that TPTB (The Powers That Be) have chosen to keep the continuity on the show.
Yeah, Jen got a bit of an education, going to a show with me. These are things that I think about out loud when I'm walking back to the subway after seeing this. I'm not sure she was fully prepared for that!
One little thing, though, that bugged me is that Rent is specifically set in 1989, and everything about it was true to that, except that there was a cell phone, and someone mentioned email. And I'm just trying to remember if those were in the original book (they had to have been...), but it seems far-fetched that they would be in an '89 setting. I don't remember either one in the movie or the tour production, though. Hmm. Ah well... it's pretty minor.
Anyways. Fun times, hey? Even with my complete analysis. Heh.
2 Comments:
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Hi Alida! Vron and I just went to see Rent last night on the big screen! Not bad...
Sounds like you're having fun in the big Apple. I was there for 6 days last June and loved the place!
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