CGOA's Rent production celebrates love and raises timely questions about health, housing, and LGBTQ+ equality
“If I had to pick one theme that I hope people take away from this show it's that love is love.” Joe Garoutte, Director of CGOA’s Rent.
The cast of Rent performing La Vie Bohème. Photo Credit: Ed Price
By Cole Goodwin
Join Columbia Gorge Orchestra Association & STAGES for the first ever Gorge production of Jonathan Larson's Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning, groundbreaking musical, RENT at the Bingen Theatre. At the time of writing this, tickets were still available for May 6th, 8th, 20th, and 21st.
RENT is a Christmas rock opera musical that tells the story of impoverished young artists, actors, and musicians, and people experiencing houselessness struggling to survive and thrive in the gritty East Village of New York City during the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
The show, while being performed in May, could not be more timely in coming to the Columbia River Gorge. It grapples with issues of addiction, sexuality, LGBTQ rights, gentrification, capitalism, the housing crisis, the AIDS crisis, and American society’s general lack of support for its most vulnerable and marginalized populations.
Pictured left to right: Tom Collins (Chalcedony Oates), Angel (Ryan Maxwell), Mark (Reuben Betts) and Roger (William Thayer-Daugherty.) Photo Credit: Ed Price
The show is timely in that the Gorge has been experiencing a housing and mental and behavioral health crisis for years and seeing as these issues have only been exacerbated by the global COVID-19 pandemic, the themes of eviction, houselessness, addiction, the struggle for LGBTQ acceptance, coping with the loss of those taken before their time, and the human desire to create something beautiful out of their suffering seem all the more powerful.
The ensemble cast performing “Christmas Bells.” Photo Credit: Ed Price
CGOA Nancy Merz said the show felt especially close to home because her doctor was the first doctor in Oregon to die of AIDS during the AIDS epidemic. She said she felt the show was very timely considering the current climate of the Columbia River Gorge and America as a whole.
"I think even though we may not be in an AIDS epidemic, we still, as a nation, are struggling with a lot of the same issues today; we've experienced a pandemic, assaults on our equality and our rights as humans to just exist," said Merz. "And while the exterior circumstances of our world have changed, the interior human experience of love and loss hasn't."
Warning: spoilers ahead.
The show begins with roommates Mark (Reuben Betts) and Roger (William Thayer-Daugherty) making an unscripted music video in their apartment while their friend Tom Collins (Chalcedony Oates) passes out on the street drunk and is being robbed. That's where Angel, (Ryan Maxwell) a street drummer, finds Tom and saves him. The two discover that they both are HIV positive and fall in love.
Angel (Ryan Maxwell) dressed in Christmas drag recounts a funny (but also horrifying) tale for Tom Collins, Mark and Roger. Photo Credit: Ed Price
While Collins’ and Angel's love is sweet and sincere and at times funny it is really the parallel romances between Joanne (Ayanna Hamilton) and Maureen (Ashley Will) and Roger and Mimi (Amelia Vasquez) that bring in the fun, the drama, and the shenanigans. Joanne struggles with Muareen’s infidelity, and Roger and Mimi, who are both HIV positive, struggle to tell each other the truth of how they feel.
Then the show really begins when Roger and Mark’s ex roommate Benny (Seth Kelly) who has recently married into money and bought the roommate’s building has it rezoned so that he can start a tech company. He tells them they must pay the last years worth of rent or they will be evicted—despite it being the Christmas season. This leads to a moo-ving and hilarious protest performance by Maureen that doesn’t budge the landlord but certainly pleases the audience with some big laughs.
Maureen’s (Ashley Will) protesting her eviction with a performance art piece that includes a sock puppet. Photo Credit: Ed Price
The ensemble cast supports with powerful harmonies questioning the honesty of a society that celebrates Christmas but has no vacancies for the houseless at the Holiday Inn. The ensemble cast really helps to add to or break up the drama with fun numbers celebrating the freedom, taboo, and joy of the bohemian lifestyle.
The cast of Rent tearing it up on stage. Photo Credit: Ed Price
In Act Two, the play takes a more somber tone as Angel's struggle with HIV ends in her death. Torn apart by her loss Tom, Roger, Mark, and Mimi go their separate ways, while their parents anxiously leave them telephone messages wondering where they are at and if they are okay. And for a time it seems that the lessons of love and joy Angel instilled in those around her were in vain. The cast joins in an ensemble number to comment on the state of living in America at the end of a millenia. And by the end of this show, Roger and Mimi are together once more thanks to Angel making a special appearance from beyond the grave and all is well again.
Rent is a show full of humor, drama, and above all music. The duets, ensemble cast action, solos, fit together perfectly into a show that is at once funny, moving, and spirited. When this cast of volunteer performers from the Gorge community takes the stage, the audience can easily imagine they have become immersed on the streets of New York City.
Mimi (Amelia Vasquez) performing a solo from the top of the stage. Photo Credit: Ed Price
The idea for the play was loosely based off of Puccini's opera La Boheme. Larson said he wrote it “to bring musical theater to the MTV generation.” Tragically, Larson unexpectedly died the night before his show opened. His cast was devastated. They sang through the opening numbers without acting it out but eventually became so moved by the audience and the lyrics of Larson's songs, that they began to launch into a full blown acted performance.
CGOA & STAGES local production of RENT is directed by Joe Garoutte with musical direction by Dan Kenealy.
Director Garoutte had high praise for his cast, crew, musicians, volunteers and organization partners who helped make the production a reality.
"I want to say I am grateful. It's a good cast, a good crew. I am grateful everyday," said Garoutte. "Without the arts and without this theater tribe, our community and my life would certainly not be as joyful."
CGOA volunteers spent countless hours painting, building, and renovating parts of the Bingen Theater (including putting in new lighting and fixing the roof) to prepare it for the show.
The Bingen Theatre.
Garoutte said that directing the show challenged him to learn about other genders, sexualities, and how to honor diverse people's pronouns.
"For me, being a cisgender, heterosexual male in this community meant that I didn't really have an educated understanding of pronouns. And I had to tell them that, hey, I'm not going to be perfect with it because this is new to me, and I'm learning. So, I had to learn a lot about how to not judge what someone’s gender is based on or what they look like in order to be able to make sure my cast feels at home, respected, and loved," said Garoutte.
The show certainly brings gender diversity to the table, but it also brings non-stop music, without a single spoken line between breaks making it an endurance event for the musicians.
Kenealy, the musical director, estimated the band has spent "hundreds of hours'' preparing for the show. Kenealy himself made what the creative team affectionately and jokingly referred to as "Dan tracks".
"It sounds like a disease you'd catch," said Kenealy. "But what it actually was is I made tracks where I sang every part in the play so that the band could have something to play with and learn the cues of the show."
The music of the show keeps the show running and the cast on their toes and on their entrances. Powerful and approachable lyrics are supported by a cast and band that doesn't shy away from displaying the full range of human emotion in their performance
The cast itself is lively, perfectly imperfect, and more diverse in terms of age, race, gender, and sexuality than is often seen in Gorge community productions.
Chalcedony Oates who plays Tom Collins, and identifies as omnisexual and nonbinary, said that they were glad to have brought queer representation to the stage in the Gorge.
"It's important to have this representation because it's real, and it shows that queer love is a love like any other; it doesn't matter what their gender is. Love is love," said Oates.
Tom Collins (Chalcedony Oates) singing a solo. Photo Credit: Ed Price
Ryan Maxwell who plays Angel said that for them, the show has been a way to express their gender queer identity in a community where it didn't feel safe to be gender non-conforming when they were growing up.
"This play has been a lot of emotional labor. When I play Angel, I don't feel like I'm acting very much because Angel just feels very much like me. I don't feel the need to be constricted by a gender binary. I don't feel like I'm meant to fit into a box. I just feel like I'm expressing who I am throughout the show. Angel loves to bring people joy, and make people laugh, and dance and express themselves in their own way. And Angel represents so many of these things that I am. I'm gender queer. And there's a lot of themes of addiction in this show, and I'm in recovery. So, to get to live those things through this show has been a lot; it's been a really raw experience because it feels like I'm putting this raw version of myself out there into a community where I didn't feel safe being me growing up."
Ryan Maxwell owning the stage. Photo Credit: Ed Price
"But now to get to come back to this community healed and see that this community has healed and is helping. And so this performance had felt kind of like a ribbon cutting on my identity, of coming out to the community as a real true authentic version of myself, and that required letting go of a lot of dead and it required a lot of embracing of pain and fear that I've experienced in my life. But these last few rehearsals I've really felt myself disappear into who Angel is. And that joy that Angel brought to people she brought to me too."
"I'll also say it was nice to be the one who died for once," said Maxwell laughing. "Not to make a callous joke, but I've lost over a hundred people in the last seven or eight years of my life. I'm not sure how to explain what that feels like exactly, but being the one who died on stage has definitely been a new and cathartic experience for me that has been almost–freeing. Playing Angel has been really freeing for me."
"And I will say that I love Cal (Chalcedony Oates) as Collins, and I'm so glad that Cal is my Collins, because for a long time I shied away from masculine energy in those around me and in myself because so much of the culture of masculinity in America is toxic. But through Angel and through this show and working with Cal, I've really gotten to experience this beautiful masculine energy that is so nourishing, and beautiful and loving and kind, and it's just been amazing." said Maxwell.
Tom Collins and Angel on stage. Photo Credit: Ed Price
So how to end the review, well, Rent is a commentary on the true price of technological, societal, capitalist gentrifying and industrializing "progress" in a society that undervalues art, love, and diversity. Because how can there really be true progress of the human heart and soul without the arts, variety of human experience, and without abolishing the systems that keep marginalized people sick, addicted, impoverished, and experiencing houselessness?
But overall, and above anything else, Rent is a musical that reminds us not to measure our lives in minutes, money, sunsets, or cups of coffee but in love.
To sum it all up:
"If I had to pick one theme that I hope people take away from this show it's that love is love," said Garoutte, then he pauses and speaks again with emotion heavy in his voice.
“I’m choking up. It’s an emotional thing for me, but I hope people who come to see the show see that the love between the two characters Tom and Angel is real and that love is love.”
Tickets are available at GorgeOrchestra.org and at Reverbnation.com. Proceeds from ticket sales go to CGOA.
The show is rated "PG-13" for language, drug use, and sexual or suggestive content.
Proof of vaccination or a negative Covid-19 test are required upon entry to all CGOA performances.
The Friday May 13th and Sunday May 15th matinee performances will include post-show "talk backs" with the cast and creative team to answer audience questions about topics raised within the show. The “talk backs” will be facilitated by Caitlin Cray.
Beer from Everybody's Brewing, wine from AniChe Cellars and a few snacks (pretzels and nuts) will be available for purchase at the show. AniChe will donate half of their wine sales proceeds to CGOA, and Everybody's Brewing will donate 100% of beer sales proceeds to CGOA, and is offering 10% off to Rent attendees at their brewery for those who bring their Rent programs to Everybody's Brewing on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays throughout the run of the show
Kyle Bray, Office Manager at Everybody’s and CGOA board member Kathryn Murray serving drinks and snacks at the Bingen Theatre.
