I saw Ghosts' production of Rent last night at the Electric Theatre in Guildford. Not absolutely sure what I saw. A minimalist set whose main features were three stacks of TVs and a payphone. Most of the TV’s were ‘dead’ but, four were playing endless loops of video: a party scene on one, where the camera's view was, for the most part obscured by the garishly patterned shirt of someone standing with their back to it; a static view on another of what seemed to me to be a Stetson placed on a chair; and on the other two, an elderly couple seated - possibly watching TV (off-screen). The highlight of the first act was when the woman of the couple stood up and took a couple of empty plates out, presumably to the kitchen.
This is, perhaps, being a little unfair to a cast of very accomplished players. All the principles were most convincing in their roles - insofar as the said roles could be adequately deduced from what clues were available. I'm afraid the symbolism of a silver icon (not particularly star-shaped) placed on top of one of the pyramids of TVs, that was supposed to turn it into a Christmas tree, was completely lost on me. No doubt I missed other clues as to what was going on. I did pick up on the 'five hundred thousand and something minutes’ song representing the passing of a year, but the action seemed to be continuous and belie the passage of such a length of time. It wasn't until afterwards that I realised the four carols sprinkled throughout the performance signified that the action took place over four years. Since we started at Christmas, celebrated New Year, had a mention of Valentine's Day and Halloween, followed by more carols, I had thought the whole play covered just one year.
Enigmatic is a word that comes to mind; someone suggested 'surrealistic', although the events depicted were too ordinary, to my mind, to suggest surrealism, unless I missed some deeper symbolisms. It is certainly a play that leaves much to the audience’s own interpretation. As far as I could tell, the basic events covered were: 1) some people being evicted for non-payment of rent; 2) joining other homeless people 3) living sexually amoral lives; 3) (only) two of them dying, presumably from AIDS, although I don't think this was made explicit in the play; 4) people being allowed back into their accommodation. (Was this irony? It was too late, their homeless lifestyle had already taken its toll? But then, dying of AIDS isn't particularly related to homelessness, is it? So I'm sticking with 'enigmatic’.
The first act was over-long and perhaps too difficult to interpret. As a result, a number of the audience didn't make it back after the interval. Which was a pity, because I thought the last act was better - not just because it was shorter. There were some poignant moments - particularly the death scenes that were handled very sensitively by the actors - both the dying and the grieving.
For me, again enigmatically, the best and the worst aspect of the performance was the music. Rents is performed in an operatic style (based, I believe on La Boehme?) so there is very little dialogue that is not sung. The music was good and the singing, musically speaking was very good, with excellent harmonies from the chorus and overall the sound was exhilarating. But - a big but - I was unable to make out the words of over half of what the chorus sang. And I don't mean missing the odd word here and there, but whole chunks were just very pleasant, but meaningless sounds. Occasionally, this applied to the principles, too, but much less so. I can't put it down to the voices, which all seemed excellent, including the chorus. It has to have been some combination of the acoustics and the PA and the voices/music balance. Inevitably, this distracted from my enjoyment of the show, and most probably accounted for at least some of the missing clues as to exactly what was going on.
I confess I knew nothing of Rents beforehand, nor of any of Larson’s works. How much more I know , now, I hesitate to say. But this, I suspect, is due more to the nature of the play than to Ghosts’ ambitious production, which is well worth seeing, full of verve and containing some excellent performances, particularly from Angel and her/his boyfriend, and from Mimi, but, sadly, also due to my missing out on half the libretto.
