Buy, Don't Rent

Another Saturday night misfire. And now this year's Hollywood Bowl season resembles my father's 1971 Buick LeSabre.

That didn't start either.

Last weekend, the Bowl mistakenly staged a version of the Broadway musical "Rent" and it was directed by none other than Neil Patrick Harris, who now can do anything even remotely connected to show business. Doogie did the best he could with the cavernous arena and a musical that is admittedly meant to be intimate. But, at the end of the evening, there was always something that didn't match. Like the tie that didn't quite go with that shirt you bought separately at Nordstrom's.

In the past, the Hollywood Bowl has made an annual habit of staging a classic Broadway musical. We've seen "Mame," "My Fair Lady," "Camelot," "The Music Man," and, most notably a wonderful "South Pacific" with Reba McEntire and Brian Stokes Mitchell. I've loved the tradition, but I realize that it's a great way to get Grandma and Grandpa unto the Bowl shuttle bus from Chatsworth, but not their kids. And, indeed, they might be running out of classic musicals to stage. After all, what could be next? Carol Channing singing "Before the Parade Passes By" while tooling around the Bowl stage in a Hoveround?

So, now they're looking at more current musicals to produce and why not "Rent," which made its heralded Broadway debut in 1996?

Well, thanks for asking and I've got some reasons why they shouldn't have bothered.

You might want to start with the show itself. "Rent" has always been an enigma with me. I saw the stage version. I thought I liked it. I saw the movie version. I thought I liked it even more. When I saw the Bowl version, I no longer knew why I thought I liked it on two earlier occasions. It all confuses me.

Let's face it. The show has one memorable song. One. Only one. The rest of the rest is so jumbled together that it's like an explosion at the Muzak factory. The score is so forgettable that I couldn't remember what is in the first act by the time we got to the second act. And the story is really a rip-off. La Boheme with AIDS. The shortest pitch meeting in Broadway history.

Neil Patrick Harris, meanwhile, needs to adapt the show to fit the confines and the time restraints of the Hollywood Bowl so he cuts and pastes it together again like a Powerpoint presentation. Now, the story, which never made sense in the first place, comes off like "Charlie Chan in Reno." Who are these people? Where were they before? Is anybody connected to anybody else? The Bowl includes a plot summary in the program, but that's useful only if you remembered to bring your night vision goggles.

The Bowl production is ballyhooed as having an "all star" cast. That's sort of like mistaking Joseph Papp's Public Theater for the cast list from an episode of 'Murder, She Wrote." Save for Wayne Brady, I know none of them. There is allegedly a Pussycat Doll somewhere on stage, but I wouldn't know one of them from a Guy Lombardo Royal Canadian. One of the actors is named Aaron Tveit and I spend part of the night obsessing over how his last name is actually pronounced.

Truth be told, the detractors in the audience were few and far between. The show has its ardent fans as evidenced by all the screaming around me. Most in the throng were gasping for a sight of director Harris at the show's conclusion and I was not surprised that he did not comply. Neil, along with being incredibly talented, strikes me as one classy individual who was plainly aware that the night was all about the material and not Doogie Howser MD.

When I think about the "Rent" overall phenomenon, I'm starting to believe that the show got a lifetime hall pass when its creator, Jonathan Larson, died ten days before its Broadway opening. How could anybody possibly give it a shitty review? As a result, the myth has prevailed over the years and elevated it to heavenly status? It's amazing how mediocrity can be massaged into something much loftier.

Sort of like the Hollywood Bowl fare every weekend in 2010.

Dinner last night: Short ribs with hoisin sauce.