Rent Live on FOX - 1/27/2019 (Spoilers)

Advertisements

I knew that "Rent" was being done as the next live musical production for television, but somehow I missed that it was coming up so soon.

Based on what I've read, it sounds like they've taken some cues from the highly successful "Jesus Christ Superstar" broadcast over on NBC. What little they're saying about it sounds like it'll be more similar to the original Broadway production than the previous live musicals that were styled like old-school live television shows.

The only part I'm wondering about is how much they'll have to censor it. There are multiple places throughout Rent that are questionable whether they'd get past "standards and practices."

 

Musically, it seems fine so far. Beyond the censoring, they seem to be changing a few words unnecessarily which makes me unhappy.

 

The show started with a “previously recorded” graphic, so I wonder if they went exclusively with the dress rehearsal. I have it paused at the moment so I don’t know if they went live at some point.

 

Yeah, the audio mix is pretty bad.

I'm still annoyed at some of the lyric/dialog changes... for instance, I have no idea why they had to change the spoken segment in "La Vie Boheme." Of anything, the one part that I wondered if they'd change was Mark's reference to sexual self-pleasure - and that was one of the parts they left alone. Go figure.

A little stunned they did "Contact" for this version, what with all the other censoring that they did.

I'm mostly OK with all the casting other than Valentina as Angel. S/he (apologies, I'm not sure what pronoun s/he prefers) is not a singer, not an actor, and is the weakest part of the cast.

(To be perfectly honest, I'm also having a little problem with the actor playing Mark Cohen. The character is Jewish, and to be honest, I'm not really getting that from the actor that they chose for that character.)

 

Ugh, no thanks. I'll watch the "Live on Broadway" version instead. The movie version was... pretty bad.

 

It was a filming of the final cast on Broadway. (They compiled it from some of the final performances before the show closed, including the final curtain call.)

 

The one part I miss the most is the original staging of "Seasons of Love" and "I'll Cover You (Reprise)." It's so iconic to the show that I'm frankly kind of surprised they took it out. (They even included that staging of it in the promos for this version, so they had to recognize that.)