I have returned from East Fourth Street, and the trip was very worthwhile. I always regretted seeing RENT in its original Off-Off-Broadway home, and I am happy to be one of the lucky few to see ONCE there. The movie is a glorious film, filled with yearning and unrequited love sublimated into music writing and making. The new musical is a really fine translation of the film into another medium. Roles have been changed, enlarged, and expanded to fill out the book, but the essentials remain the same: the Dublin Guy meets the Czech Girl with the broken Hoover vacuum cleaner while he's performing as a singer on the street. She plays piano and the friendship begins. He misses his girl who left him and moved to New York (I think it's London in the film) and she's got a daughter by a husband who's back in the Czech Republic.
If you haven't seen the film, I recommend it highly, for the story, the cast, and the Dublin locales. I like the score very much, and most of it, with about 3 or 4 new songs make up the score of the show. When you enter the theatre, the cast is warming up with Irish pub songs, and everyone, except for the Guy and the Girl, plays several instruments: Andy Taylor, in the expanded role of the bank loan office, plays mandolin, guitar, and cello, and he's wonderful. The lady playing the Girl's Czech mother plays melodica, and accordion.
I think one of the reasons the show works so well is that neither Steve Kazee nor Cristin Milioti resembles the film actors and songwriters, so we're not stuck in a NINE TO FIVE attempt to replicate Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, or Jane Fonda, or LEGALLY BLONDE's needing a Reese Witherspoon. They're both wonderful and they break your heart.
The cast, for most of the play, sit on the sides of the action and play and sing as the show's orchestra, and their unaccompanied choral sound is perfect for the scene on the beach when the demo CD the Guy is making is finished. My friend Rob and I had great seats in the second row from the last; we sat in front of Norbert Leo Butz, Aaron Tveit, and Tara Rubin (I think).
