‘Rent’ Rattles Around in O.C.

It’s human nature that the more something is hyped, the more people tend to sit back, fold their arms and skeptically await it to live up to the hoopla. So it’s no surprise that by the time “Rent” reached Southern California last summer, nearly 1 1/2 years after its dramatic emergence off-Broadway, got mixed reactions.

With the passage of time, extensive media coverage and first-hand contact with the show, audiences across the country--particularly viewers in their teens and 20s--are being swept up in a story that truly speaks to them. So as this rock-driven, AIDS-era recasting of “La Boheme” plays through Aug. 16 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, perhaps we can assess it a bit more rationally.

For instance, we can acknowledge that the structure of the late Jonathan Larson’s musical seems slapped together in places, and that its deviations from Giacomo Puccini’s opera aren’t always successful. One or two of its songs don’t measure up to the others. Yet none of this diminishes the show’s impact. The rawness of its music, combined with the unrestrained emotion of its storytelling, make it uncommonly powerful.

Too bad, then, that this power has so much trouble making it off the stage in Costa Mesa. For all of its rock concert bravado, “Rent” is, at heart, an intimate tale of love in its many forms, and its emotional urgency quickly dissipates in the cavernous 2,994-seat Segerstrom Hall. Acoustics, in particular, are a problem. At Wednesday’s opening, heavily amplified words and music bounced all over, essentially unintelligible. That’s a crime, because this show has so much to say.

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Set in the present day, “Rent” focuses on a group of young musicians, filmmakers, performance artists and dancers living hand-to-mouth in New York’s East Village. The crisis of the moment is that they’re about to be evicted for nonpayment of rent, but in the much larger scheme of things, they’re becoming acutely aware that all of life is “rented”--it’s all borrowed time.

Whereas consumption shadowed “La Boheme’s” 1830s milieu of artists and poets, HIV stalks “Rent’s” characters. The sense of sand slipping through an hourglass lends urgency to the characters’ lives and loves.

The show’s message--of living each moment to its fullest--is echoed again and again by the various characters. Mimi, an HIV-positive junkie and exotic dancer, uses it as an excuse for indiscriminate living, singing: “There is no future, there is no past; I live this moment as my last.”

Still, by show’s end, others have given the refrain a more positive spin: “There is no future, there is no past; thank God this moment’s not the last.” In a gorgeous tapestry of interwoven lines, they then sing: “There’s only now, there’s only here. Give in to love or live in fear. No other path, no other way--no day but today.”

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As a paean to love in its many forms, “Rent” becomes a celebration of difference. Boys smooch with boys, girls kiss girls, and, yes, boys fall wildly in love with girls.

After its appearances at the La Jolla Playhouse and Los Angeles’ Ahmanson Theatre, the touring “Rent” revisits the Southland with several of the same performers but a few key changes. Soulful Mark Leroy Jackson returns as Collins, the cyber-age philosopher, as does the sexy but loopy Leigh Hetherington as performance artist Maureen. Julia Santana returns as Mimi--her performance having gained considerable heat in the interim.

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The previous cast’s celebrities--”Doogie Howser’s” Neil Patrick Harris and “My So-Called Life’s” Wilson Cruz--are replaced by Scott Hunt as Mark, the would-be filmmaker (Hunt is appealingly earnest but not as grippingly gritty as Harris), and Andy Senor as the drag queen and overall proponent of fabulousness Angel (Senor has a silkier voice and more electric presence than Cruz). Newcomer Adrian Lewis Morgan rounds things out with a fittingly raw-edged performance as rocker Roger.

The staging by Michael Greif (La Jolla Playhouse’s artistic director) has become seamless since New York. His approach is presentational--with much of the action directed at the audience--yet cinematically fluid, an MTV-like hybrid that feels absolutely right for this material.

Along with the center’s typically well-heeled opening-night crowd, Wednesday’s house was filled with a cult of young “Rent”-heads who have taken to seeing the show in city after city. Their sheer love for this show is an encouraging sign for theater’s future, and it brings to life those early days in “Rent’s” New York run when viewers--caught up in discovery--became more excited with each song.

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* “Rent,”

Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Tuesday-Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Ends Aug. 16. $21-$52.50. Also $20 front-of-orchestra tickets, two hours before curtain, only at the box office. (714) 740-7878. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

Adrian Lewis Morgan: Roger Davis

Scott Hunt: Mark Cohen

Mark Leroy Jackson: Tom Collins

D’Monroe: Benjamin Coffin III

Monique Daniels: Joanne Jefferson

Andy Senor: Angel Schunard

Julia Santana: Mimi Marquez

Leigh Hetherington: Maureen Johnson

An Orange County Performing Arts Center and Pace Theatrical Group presentation. Book, music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson. Original concept/additional lyrics: Billy Aronson. Directed by Michael Greif. Musical direction: Robert Sprayberry. Choreography: Marlies Yearby. Set: Paul Clay. Costumes: Angela Wendt. Lights: Blake Burba.