Rent by 9 Works Productions

Dear Imagined Readers,

We apologize for the long hiatus.

Here now, as a special treat, are some notes that me and a few friends put together on the recent 9 Works staging of RENT, the famed Broadway rock musical by the late Jonathan Larson. We saw it May 27 at the RCBC Plaza Theater in Makati.

Yours dearly,
mumblingmaya

• Why did they allow 11-12 year old children to watch RENT? Do their guardians and do the production people know that this has blatantly sexual content?



• Nicole Laurel Asensio is pretty and has a great voice, but it’s obvious that she’s not used to sexy roles and striptease and pole dancing. Also, they made her wear pants while pole dancing. Why did they decided to tone down Mimi the 19 year old druggie stripper?



• Fred Lo plays filmmaker Mark effectively.



• Gian Magdangal, who plays Roger, can sing well, but is really flat when delivering dialogue.



• OJ Mariano as Tom Collins is a pleasant surprise.



• Job Bautista as Angel is acrobatic and energetic.



• Given that Maureen should be funny when she does her protest performance piece, does she have to be Ai-ai Delas Alas absurd? Like Maureen the character was really mocking her own protest? And she’s also supposed to show her butt in the frontal, not in profile.



• Noel Rayos played Benny Coffin III. He was pitchy, among other things.



• The blocking in every scene literally looked like a firing squad. They had one or two characters singing in the middle while everyone else in the cast stood in one line behind them, watching.



• Someone from the cast screamed “Suck it bitch!” during Maureen’s performance poetry on housing and capitalism, which had obvious undertones on lesbian sex. Way to go, you musical that also deals with LGBT equality, you.



• Why do they fade the lights when Collins and Angel kiss, and all you hear is a smack?



• Blue light does not help a scene that shows a seedy city where people have dirty sex while someone is dying.



• The direction lacked emphasis on surviving and living as a twenty-something in ruthless 1990's America. This production seems to rely solely on the AIDS aspect of the plot.