Waiter, waiter, there’s HAIR in my musical! It certainly seems that way with RENT, the smash hit Broadway musical currently playing at the Bass Concert Hall. And the plot/musical numbers aren’t just reminiscent, at times, of that other musical, HAIR. The audience will get whiffs of other shows, too. But above all, the plot derives (purposefully) from Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème, right down to the same-named female protagonists— Mimi— who, in both the original opera and the Broadway show, are both overly flirtatious and terminally ill. But one needn’t be familiar with the opera to enjoy its updated version. RENT is packed with some outstanding moments and more than a few excellent songs. Basically, what we have is a group of young, fucked up, starving artist types squatting in NYC’s East Village, trying to figure out life and love and, like, you know, The Meaning of It All. Is this a tired premise? Certainly not for fans of literary archetypes—the old man vs. man, man vs. himself, man vs. nature (or the concrete jungle in this instance). Mark (Anthony Rapp) is our narrator, a documentary filmmaker hounded by his answering machine, which fills up with nagging messages from, among others, his Jewish mother and a TV producer wanting him to make a soul-selling deal-with-the-devil. His roommate, Roger (Adam Pascal), is HIV positive, rendered more or less agoraphobic until Mimi (Lexi Lawson) the junkie-stripper with AIDs hurls herself at him and mad love ensues. more ›

Here’s our dilemma: We really want to like Anthony Rapp's Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical “Rent.” more ›