‘Rent’ went up—to new heights of performance

The artistic emblem of an era, “Rent” touches on the triumph of perennial passion and fleeting nature of youth against hyper-focusing on a global crisis mired in politics, scorn, and hopelessness.

There is almost a prescient nature in the storylines of “Rent” in 2025 that brings with it great promise, but not without great challenge.

In director Jess Ader-Ferretti’s vision of “Rent,” we have a true telling of the late-‘80s/early-‘90s AIDS and heroin crises (especially with Ronald R. Green’s millennium-era wardrobe choices), but also a strong bond with contemporary struggles of the LGBTQIA+ community and the opioid epidemic from a society that is in flux with understanding and accepting non-traditional expressions of individuality and struggle.

Ader-Ferretti’s “Rent” is a more mature portrait of the ‘90s and early aughts’ Broadway versions because her direction has given the characters more introspection into their actions and how they relate to each other.

Scenic designer John Mazzarella recreated the industrial loft space, but with a nod to Metropolis and perhaps alluding to the “warehouse” nature of the characters’ lives ending too soon.

Bobby Peterson as music director had crisp, fresh, and nuanced arrangements for the classic songs that are sacred to every theater kid of a certain age. Particularly in “Will I?” “Without You,” the instrumentals created a hallowed ground of a burnt Elysium for the performers to elegize the loss of beauty and life.

In “I’ll Cover You (Reprise),” the soft, bluesy spirit was present and could have filled in for an entire Southern choir.

Lighting designer John Vaiano carved out podiums for soloists with the stark, but non-distracting spotlights, especially on Tom Collins (played with utter selfless abandon by Shiloh Bennett).

“Contact,” in the second act of the show, was lit with raunchy reds and choreographed by Kevin Burns like a Madonna video that got banned for being too explicit mixed with found footage of club kids in the Tunnel nightclub in 1993.

Roger Davis (David DiMarzo) and Mark Cohen (Patrick Campbell) captured the enduring friendship that is the core of the story. The contrasting voices showcased by DiMarzo and Campbell, respectively, as the fallen frontman who can spectacularly hold a note but not the emotions behind it and the shy, beleaguered filmmaker who blossoms from his cocoon with a building bravado in song, were painful reminders of the prisons we create on our own.

Angel Dumott Schunard (Ruben Fernandez) was every bit and a mile as engaging, entertaining, and elevating as the character’s cherubic name implies. Fernandez’s mastery of the choreography in the platform heels is a delight for any “Rent” fan, but Angel shone the most in her command of the audience in the contrasting physicality of her Bond girl dress and sterile white death cloaks.

Bennett’s soulful mourning of Angel in “I’ll Cover You” was so moving that audience members visibly had to hold back jumping into a standing ovation when the plot continued. The ability of Bennett to bring back Collins into a lighter iteration after his reprogramming of the ATMs to honor Angel shows not just strong versatility as an actor, but a deep understanding of overcoming grief.

Benjamin Coffin III (Steven Charles) and Joanne Jefferson (Shaina Stroh), as the yuppie-turncoat antagonist and straight-laced Harvard lawyer, were great contrasts to the artists of the loft and sung with powerful voices that commanded their elevated station in the monetary society rejected by the world of “Rent.”

Mimi Marquez (Alisa Barsch) and Maureen Johnson (Amanda Mac) portrayed two deathly sexy sirens with the accompanying enticing vocal prowess expected of women whose allure could bring a man to ruin.

Mac’s “Over the Moon” performance, which deserves a series of theater studies in and of itself with miming and elocution skills, was flawless and equal parts ridiculous and high craftsmanship. Mac’s chemistry with Stroh was a much-welcomed moment of humor and her belting of “Take Me or Leave Me” was spine-tinglingly astounding.

Barsch’s rollercoaster of a character, who is multiple times at death’s door in the two and half hours of the musical, recovers so ebulliently in “Out Tonight” and the finale that we forget the price she has paid for living her life on her terms. Barsch’s execution of the choreography of “Out Tonight” is dazzling in sheer strength and stamina, but also buoys in the face of heaviness.

In minor roles as Gordon (Keith Jones) and Alexi Darling (Anna Moceri), Jones and Moceri provided and reaffirmed the message of “Rent”—brilliance and emotion may only be rented, but always occupied. 

Performances of ‘Rent’ run through March 9. For tickets and info, visit www.cmpac.com or call
631-218-2810.