RagTag’s ‘Rent’ benefit offers too little life, too much chaos

In RagTag Entertainment’s “Rent,” it was easy, whenever I closed my eyes, to enjoy the musical numbers coming from a 19-member cast and six onstage band members.

Trouble is, whenever I peeked, I saw little but chaos.

You sense trouble before this benefit at Green Valley Ranch Resort begins. There’s no directorial credit in the program notes. What kind of theater show doesn’t give credit to a director? Allen Hong is given a nod for “staging,” but is artistic director Andrew Wright aware that directing involves a lot more than “staging”?

Jonathan Larson’s often revered script and score places us, during the mid-1990s, in New York’s East Village. But, other than a projection of a partial section of the New York City skyline, we get no sense of place.

The band members take up too much stage area. The uncredited “set” consists mostly of a small table and a chair or two.

When the actors try to perform, they’re barely able to physically get by one another. Hong often has them clustered to one side, with no visual esthetics or logic.

Most of the singing, while pleasing, doesn’t feel related to the heart or the situation.

The plot is centered on an offbeat relationship between young wannabe songwriter Roger (Aaron Paul) and party girl Mimi (Pilita Danesh).

They’re both AIDS sufferers at a time when the disease was considered an automatic, painful death sentence. But the two actors barely seem to notice one another.

And while the middle-aged Paul can croon a sad song with all the angst of a boy-band lead singer, Danesh doesn’t seem to have anything on her mind other than sounding easy-listening nice. She plays a dying drug addict as if she were a wholesome, young Julia Roberts on holiday.

It’s obvious, though, that the real problems lie with Hong and Wright. They haven’t yet learned what acting and dramatic theater are all about.

One beautiful rose on the thorn: The show wakes up whenever Cian Coey, as the eccentric street artist Maureen, arrives on the scene.

Here’s an actress who knows how to create a character who “owns” her songs and dialogue. Her comedic abilities and sharp-edged voice bring flesh and blood to a mechanical production that needs more signs of human life.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at vegastheaterchat @aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.