Review of Loft Theatre Company production of Rent (2011)

In a word, this is breathtaking! We can only gasp at the high-voltage energy of an unstoppable cast.

But that’s not the most amazing thing about this production of the rock opera based on La Bohème. The real question is how could a Warwickshire town’s local theatre have assembled a company which is more than a match for any London West End stage team?

All credit goes to director Tim Willis for recruiting performers and musicians from a wide range of sources and virtually setting them alight in one of the most striking theatrical experiences of the year. The array of talent on view is simply stunning.

In the true traditions of rock opera, of course, the show is raw, hard-bitten, satirical, funny and sad. Writer Jonathan Larson’s music and lyrics are both moving and uplifting and his characters embody the hopes, dreams and despair of impoverished artistic wannabes facing doom in the HIV/Aids doldrums of New York’s Lower East Side.

A Christmas show? Hardly. But it relates. This is the cruel underbelly of the festive season – no room, as one song tells us, at the Holiday Inn. Yet the mood, like the tempo, constantly rouses us again to savour the good things of human relationships. And how these assert themselves, with Mark Randall and Chris Gilbey-Smith quite superb as young men squaring up to an uncertain future, one with an idealised vision of escaping to a Utopian Santa Fe, the other essentially keeping lives afloat.

There is marvellous stuff too from Jackie-Lee Lilwall as Boheme’s cleverly updated Mimi, from Douglas Gilbey-Smith’s commanding drag queen and a pint-sized bundle of dynamite named Indigo LeFevre. But they’re all great and so is the band under the able direction of Matt Flint.

The show does itself a disservice by a first act which is far too long and tends to batter the senses. But the second half more than compensates and even gives us welcome cause for optimism.

We can also hope we see a great deal more of these extraordinary performers.

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Peter McGarry is an experienced, independent professional theatre critic who has agreed to review Loft Theatre Company productions.

The agreement with the Loft is that Peter is free to express his opinions for good or ill. The Loft Theatre Company has no control whatsoever over the content of these reviews and will never comment publicly on what he writes.