It was never going to be easy. With its almost entirely sung rock-opera score, its mature themes and language, 1990s punchlines and status as a cult phenomenon, "Rent" has become one of the hardest musicals to pull off. And it's even harder to do on family-friendly broadcast television in 2019. Fox's live version of the Broadway musical about starving artists living in New York during the AIDS epidemic was disadvantaged from the moment it was announced. The choice a marked contrast to the network's previous musicals, the delightful "Grease Live!" and the cringe-worthy "A Christmas Story Live!" And things for "Rent" were made ever worse when, just a day before the show was supposed to go on, one of the cast members broke his foot, forcing the network to air a Frankenstein of a show with substantial amount of pre-recorded material from Saturday's rehearsal during the hyped "live" broadcast. The result made the best of a very bad situation. It's theater after all; the show must go on. But the rehearsal performance combined with other problems – dizzying staging and camera work, a too-loud audience, awkward lines and lyrics substituted for curse words – made it difficult for "Rent" to, well, sing. Unlike the much-maligned 2005 film version of the musical, producers of Fox's "Rent" left the lengthy all-singing-all-the-time script mostly intact and built a set that looked more like a Broadway stage than the larger, more immersive TV-centric sets from "Grease" and "Story." The production also eschewed big stars (well, except for Vanessa Hudgens, I guess) in favor of young talent like Kiersey Clemons ("Dope"), Brandon Victor Dixon ("Jesus Christ Superstar in Concert"), "RuPaul's Drag Race" star Valentina and singer Tinashe. With a group of sweet-voiced young whippersnappers and the director of the original Broadway production, Michael Greif, "Rent" seemed to have the right ingredients to rise above its many challenges. But when the metaphorical curtain rose, the magic just wasn't there. The show just felt wrong from the first (taped) note. The audience surrounding the stage was energetic to a fault, sometimes overpowering the singers. The too-dark set, paired with an endlessly spinning camera that nearly induced nausea, made the show excruciatingly hard to follow, even for those familiar with the material. The energy was low, and the chemistry between many of the romantically linked characters lackluster. Adapting the script, the producers made odd choices, handing "Seasons of Love," the most famous song in the show, to minor characters. Worse, it failed to create the deep, affecting emotion the musical is known for. When Dixon, the show-stopping standout from "Jesus," sang the usually devastating ballad "I'll Cover You Reprise" at his lover's funeral, it was beautiful, but rang hollow. The spirited artist anthem "La Vie Boheme" landed with a thud. From the social-media followings of its stars to the handy history of what the world was like in 1991, "Rent" seems like it was engineered to attract a Generation Z audience. But if today's teens were going to discover and love "Rent" the way millennials did after the original Broadway run ended, it was never going to be through a live Fox musical with cursing censored and awkward voiceovers explaining the AIDS epidemic. There's nothing natural or organic about trying to absorb it between ads for "Dumbo" and "The Masked Singer." It was a nice touch to bring the original Broadway cast out to sing "Seasons of Love" at the end, but it all seemed a bit forced. La vie boheme isn't simple for anyone.<doc-sep>Tech glitches, broken bones, ghosts of stage productions past and, worst of all, live television’s unfortunate and intrusive vogue for giving studio audiences far, far too much screen time couldn’t do overmuch damage to Rent, Jonathan Larson’s beloved-by-many ’90s musical that added another chapter to both TV’s refound love of Broadway and the show’s own against-the-odds trouper legend. In what turned out to be a fortuitous move, Fox had not been calling the new Rent anything other than that one-word title (early reports had it as Rent: Live!). Good thing: the show became more Rent: Somewhat Live! after star Brennin Hunt, who played struggling musician Roger, broke his foot during a dress rehearsal yesterday. What aired on Fox tonight, as explained by the cast in an address to the television audience early in the proceedings, was mostly last night’s dress rehearsal, taped before a live audience, with Hunt’s Doc Marten-clad foot intact. Apparently only the final scene of tonight’s show was a truly live broadcast, with Hunt’s foot, in a cast, propped on a chair. No matter, really, at least as far as continuity: The scene is, in a way, an epilogue, taking place months after the plot’s main event. But if continuity wasn’t sacrificed, resorting to the dress rehearsal tape left me wondering if the occasionally underwhelming performances from some cast members during this three-hour event could be attributed to holding back for the anticipated big night. Not only that, but in New York City, at least, the first five minutes were dead air, a technical glitch fairly quickly remedied but one that contributed to a shaky start indeed. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, at least to the hard-core Rent fans – Rentheads – who packed the large studio audience and seemed to get every bit as much airtime as the cast. Like the recent Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert and Grease: Live, tonight’s Rent (all three were produced by Marc Platt, with TV direction by Alex Rudzinski) was so heavy on the audience interaction that the show itself sometimes seemed secondary, and as tiny as a raft in a sea. For all of television’s recent ballyhooed embrace of stage musicals, the networks still seem jittery about, well, stage musicals, and so hedge their bets against seeming too PBS-y by amplifying the event aspect, complete with noisy and very visible American Idol-style audiences. When a production is lousy (A Christmas Story Live! ), miscast (Peter Pan Live!‘s Christopher Walken) or both (The Sound of Music Live! with Carrie Underwood), the enthusiasm forced on TV viewers by a live audience makes a certain sense, but tonight’s Rent, stage directed by the original production’s Michael Greif, was neither. Set in early ’90s downtown Manhattan, the Tony- and Pulitzer-winning Rent, based on Puccini’s La Bohème, follows seven young friends living, or struggling to live, the bohemian life. Musicians, a filmmaker, a performance artist, a drag queen, a radical professor, among others, all do their best to survive in an East Village ravaged by AIDS and the beginnings of high-rent gentrification. Larson wouldn’t live to see his major work become a major work: He died the day Rent was to begin its first fully produced Off Broadway run. The show, of course, was a smash, moved to Broadway, won awards and developed a massive worldwide following. If the musical’s subject matter – HIV, drugs, gender nonconformity – no longer startles, tonight’s production made a fairly convincing case for Rent’s longevity. Vanessa Hudgens, who played the avant garde performance artist Maureen, and Kiersey Clemons as her lawyer girlfriend Joanne, were terrific, their “Take Me or Leave Me” duet one of tonight’s highlights. And if the extremely silly, pretend-avant garde “Over the Moon” remains Rent‘s single worst number, Hudgens did what she could. And Brandon Victor Dixon, as the big-hearted anarchist Tom Collins, all but walked off with the show, just as he did as Judas in last spring’s Jesus Christ Superstar, earning every last teardrop from “I’ll Cover You,” the love ballad he first sings as a duet with his beloved Angel (an assured, if not always vocally on point, Valentina from RuPaul’s Drag Race) and then later, heartrendingly, at Angel’s memorial service. The rest of the ensemble mostly held up, if occasionally getting lost in the busy goings on. Jordan Fisher (Hamilton) couldn’t erase memories of Anthony Rapp’s original Mark, and Hunt, injured or otherwise, sang well but showed little of the charisma that made a break-out of Adam Pascal. Keala Settle, easily the most memorable part of Hugh Jackman’s The Greatest Showman, had a small but crucial role tonight, singing the solo on the musical’s most revered song “Seasons of Love.” Even detractors of her over-the-top Idol stylings might give in after tonight’s showing. Rent still has its problems, and tonight’s version — even with music director Stephen Oremus just-enough updating of the music and set designer Jason Sherwood’s expansive use of catwalks and runways appropriate for the massive Fox studio in Los Angeles — couldn’t right its wrongs. Angel, the fearless transvestite whose death by AIDS shatters the group of friends, remains too much what her name suggests (not even her murder of a dog — yes, you read that right — can dim her halo. And the camera zooming in for a close-up as Mimi doesn’t breathe her last — Surprise! — only exaggerated Larson’s cop-out of an ending. The she’s-not-dead-after-all moment always seemed like a Carol Burnett Show Camille gag to me, never more so than tonight. Fortunately, the moment was quickly overshadowed by the not-so-surprise onstage arrival of the original Broadway cast, joining the new gang in a “Seasons of Love” reprise. Consider tonight’s staging a success if only for holding its own with Idina Menzel and Jesse L. Martin reminding Rentheads and everyone else just why this show shook Broadway and the world all those years ago.<doc-sep>A longstanding superstition holds that saying the title of William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” while inside a theater — unless you are rehearsing or performing the play itself — will bring about a terrible curse. The notion is based on an unfounded legend, but it makes you wonder what people were saying in the studio where “Rent: Live” was rehearsing the past few weeks. On Sunday, not long before the 8 p.m. curtain for the musical’s live broadcast on Fox, the network announced that Brennin Hunt, the actor playing Roger, seriously injured his foot while performing during the previous day’s dress rehearsal. Unlike on Broadway (and in most professional theater productions), the show did not have understudies for its leads. The solution? Much of what viewers would see would be Saturday’s recorded performance, the cast noted in a statement during an early commercial break. The final 15 minutes or so were live; Hunt was at a table, his foot in a cast and propped on a chair. (Hashtags like #RentNotLive and #RentKindaLive trended during the broadcast.)<doc-sep>
Follow along as IndieWire addresses the highs and lows of the live musical event. “Rent”-heads, it’s been more than 525,600 minutes since Fox announced the Pulitzer Prize-winning rock musical would come to television, and finally “no day but today” has arrived. The special joins the ranks of other Broadway musicals that have been given the live-TV treatment, such as NBC’s “Jesus Christ Superstar: Live” and Fox’s own live “Grease,” both of which earned critical acclaim. Based on the music, book, and lyrics by Jonathan Larson — who sadly passed just before the musical debuted off-Broadway — “Rent” has earned a rabid following and numerous awards. The gritty update of Puccini’s “La Bohème” follows seven struggling artists who live in New York’s East Village of the late 1980s/early 1990s. Sunday’s broadcast comes with a note of sadness. Country artist Brennin Hunt, who competed in the first season of “The X-Factor,” plays struggling musician Roger Davis in the show, but during Saturday night’s dress rehearsal Hunt sustained an ankle injury which means Sunday night’s show could rely on the pre-taped segments from the night prior. To what extent “Rent” will be truly live was not announced prior to showtime. According to an official statement from Fox, “In the spirit of ‘Rent,’ everyone — producers and cast, original and current — is dedicated to ensuring that tonight’s broadcast must, and will, go on.” IndieWire was in the audience for the dress rehearsal Saturday night, and without getting into spoilers, can confirm that the live-TV musical event experience has reached a new level of evolution, largely thanks to the way these shows have come to embrace the importance of the live audience. On Sunday night, as with Saturday, over 1,000 people will be seated in the Fox Studios soundstage where the elaborate sets have been built; how the show reveals their presence is just one of the surprises in store. The rest of the cast hails from a range of disciplines. Vanessa Hudgens, who plays performance artist Maureen Johnson, first broke out in Disney’s “High School Musical” franchise. She’s an old hand at the live-TV musical game, having starred as Rizzo in Fox’s “Grease.” Another “Grease” alum is Jordan Fisher, who plays aspiring filmmaker and narrator Mark Cohen. Similarly, “Hamilton” alum Brandon Victor Dixon, who plays computer scientist Tom Collins, recently earned an Emmy nomination for his role as Judas in “Jesus Christ Superstar: Live.” “RuPaul’s Drag Race” Miss Congeniality winner Valentina plays drag queen/percussionist Angel Dumont Schunard, while “Dope” and “Transparent” actress Kiersey Clemons plays Maureen’s girlfriend Joanne Jefferson, and musicians Mario and Tinashe play landlord Benjamin Coffin III and dancer Mimi Marquez, respectively. Additionally, Keala Settle, who was a showstopper in “The Greatest Showman” as the bearded lady singing “This Is Me,” will join the cast for the iconic solo in “Seasons of Love.” “Rent” boasts two directors: Michael Greif (“Dear Evan Hansen,” “Rent”), who directed the original New York Theatre Workshop and Broadway productions of “Rent,” is the director overseeing the stage direction. Alex Rudzinski (“Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert,” “Grease: Live,” “Dancing with the Stars”) will serve as the live television director. Sonya Tayeh serves as the choreographer. Below, follow along with the IndieWire TV team throughout the airing for an assessment of the best and worst moments as they happen. [Editor’s note: It should go without saying, but spoilers follow.] The “Rent” live musical event airs Sunday, Jan. 27 at 8 p.m. ET on Fox. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.