The Clock’s Ticking! Catch RENT In Sacramento
How does Broadway at Music Circus wrap up their 2023 season, especially just after a stunning RAGTIME?
By reminding us that the clock is always ticking, independent of how we spend the next year, what we accomplish (or don’t), and the lives we touch along the way. This time next year, 525,600 minutes will have elapsed, presenting another question:
What have you done with the time you’ve been given?
Would someone please queue up RENT’s “Seasons Of Love” so we can get this party started?!
RENT’s highlights include Sacramento’s own Teal Wicks and the cute Jake Bentley Young. Wicks’ performance was, frankly, Tony-worthy. Young’s solid performance as Mark helped anchor the production, and broke my heart toward the show’s end.
Young got a little help in the “highlight” department by way of Amma Osei, who consistently displayed her formidable vocal and dancing chops.
I found myself feeling a little jealous of Young, as he got to perform “Tango, Maureen” with Osei! I wanted to jump up on that stage and give it a whirl!
But it was another of the pairings that almost stopped the show. After Broadway at Music Circus’ RAGTIME a couple of weeks ago, I was still emotionally raw as the lights dimmed last night. Jordan Barbour and Esteban Suero were a stunning pair, and in the course of just a couple of minutes, “I’ll Cover You” was elevated to one of my all-time musical theater numbers. The tune’s reprise, halfway through the show’s second act, simultaneously broke and healed my heart. In one particular, pivotal scene, Suero knocked me off of my feet.
Suero, if you’re free sometime this week, a cup of coffee’s on me.
RENT isn’t without its shortcomings, and this production is no exception. There’s very little spoken dialog in the play, so audiences need to lean in during every song in this “rock opera” to follow the story. I almost got whiplash this time around, looking up and down each aisle as the production worked around the challenge of performing a dynamic stage show like RENT in the round. Since so much of the dialog is found in the song’s lyrics, the vocal limitations of some of casts’ voices were more obvious than they may have been in a more traditional musical. But the ensemble overcame those challenges, and made this RENT one to see.
The clock’s ticking. Remember those 525,600 minutes I mentioned? Well, by the time you read this, there will be about 5,040 minutes before this RENT production wraps in Sacramento, this Sunday. Commit a few of this minutes to grab your tickets, and sit back and let Broadcast At Music Circus blow you away for the final time this summer.
RENT runs through Sunday, August 27 at the UC Davis Health Pavilion. Tickets are available at broadwaysacramento.com.
