Rent: Play Analysis

As the actors spun the set design I became filled with anticipation for what was about to occur, but as the musical progressed my excitement toward the play dwindled. It was almost as if the initial spinning of the stage disoriented me and I was dizzy and confused for the rest of the night. Without the girls beside me explaining the play to each other during intermission I never would have known what was going on. The actors all performed wonderfully, but there were too many actors with unspoken problems to follow. Profit and delight was masked for me in this play by confusing storylines, multiple actions at once, and the play having no impact on my life. Rent showed poor creators in New York City chancing their dreams while bonding with each other through their struggles. An underlying, but very prevalent issue that many of the characters had was AIDs, although the word was never spoken aloud in the musical. The reason for this, I believe, was to show that their disease does not define them but rather everything else about their lives. This theme was almost lost for me in the business of the musical. For the entire first half, I did not know what was going on and later learned in intermission from the people beside me the storyline. After knowing what …show more content…
There were so many characters doing so much at once that I could watch the musical three times and still miss something major. If the play was stripped back then maybe profit and delight would have been more evident but with everything happening all at once they were swallowed by the hustle and bustle. One scene this is evident in is when Mark’s mother called and the actors continued their conversation so the audience had to focus on both at