Over the years, "Rent" may have toured more in Connecticut than any other Broadway show in the past few decades. There will be five performances in The Bushnell this weekend, but the current tour is scheduled to end in April, making November 5-7 the last scheduled Connecticut stop.
However, it has been expanded before. In an interview with Courant in 2018, Work Light Productions tour producer Stephen Gabriel stated that the tour may end in 2020. It started as the 20th Anniversary Tour in 2016 and then lasted long enough to be renamed the 25th Anniversary Tour. After COVID-19, it was renamed again and it is now the "25th anniversary farewell trip of the last season of love".
The cast of this tour is quite different, but the production is the same. The last time was held in Bushnell in March 2019, and Schubert of New Haven was played in November of the same year. Since the first national tour in 1998 for two weeks, Bushnell has been welcoming the "rent" tour. That tour and many subsequent tours continued the show’s Broadway tradition of drawing cheap front-row seats to enthusiastic fans who could not afford tickets. This approach not only ensures that there will be a particularly enthusiastic audience in the front, but also fits the show’s hungry artist theme. (Current travel no longer offers cheap seat options.)
Non-equity touring star Cody Jenkins as young filmmaker Mark, Coleman Cummings as depressed guitarist Roger, Leyla Garsk as the pragmatic and hardworking Joanne, and Lindy Mo Joanne’s narcissistic performance artist girlfriend Maureen, Shafic Hicks as the clever Tom Collins, Javin King as the transgender woman he fell in love with, Angel and Aiyan Smash as the revolving Mimi, she The "Out Tonight" dance on the scaffolding and stairs on the set is an inevitable performance.
Both King and Moe carried "Rent" when they played The Bushnell for the last time in 2019. Courant commented on the show, “Lyndie Moe (worn a very scary pair of black vinyl pants) often adds a special kind of sexiness-Maureen's simplified character, a lively performance artist, a little too aware that she can Easily take advantage of the people she loves", and King plays an angel "with a sense of impatient mischief."
The current "rental" tour wisely keeps the musical in its original setting from the early 90s and makes no attempt to update it. Resurgences that try to keep up with the times or to downplay AIDS content are usually not welcome. As producer Gabriel told Courant in 2019: "Michael Greif, of course, the original director of "Rent", is the director of this tour. This is still his work. From top to bottom, the creative team is the same Yes. We are playing this game, thinking about what we can bring to it, but decided because this is the 20th anniversary, let us make a complete copy."
"Rent" is $32-122 at The Bushnell Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm and 8pm, and Sunday at 1pm and 6:30pm. Bushnell.org.