New ‘Rent’ Turns on the Electricity

Loud, defiant and deliberately shocking, the rock musical “Rent” will do whatever it takes to jolt its audiences into the realization that life is rented for just a little while. Don’t waste time, it all but begs; get out there and live to the fullest.

To put this across, the show needs a company unafraid to perform with emotional abandon. It didn’t really have this (with a couple of notable exceptions) when it first reached Southern California in 1997, and it left some viewers, understandably, underwhelmed.

Thank goodness for second chances. “Rent” is back with a mostly different cast, and this time, it’s absolutely electric. At Friday’s opening at the Shubert Theatre in Century City, the show was generating the same excitement as in its first weeks on Broadway, when each new song got the audience more and more stoked, until the whole place crackled with energy.

Daphne Rubin-Vega, the original New York Mimi, has joined this touring company, which also includes Mark Leroy Jackson, who made one of the strongest impressions in the first Southern California company.

A bundle of pure libido, Rubin-Vega plays the doped-up exotic dancer Mimi with a ferocity that grabs you by the lapels and shakes you until your brain rattles around loose in your cranium. When she undulates and high-kicks her way down the metal stairs in “Out Tonight,” the Shubert is pretty much up for grabs.

Creator Jonathan Larson, who died at 35 on the eve of “Rent’s” New York triumph, turned Puccini’s “La Boheme” into an opera for the MTV generation. His central characters are young adults who have rejected the status quo for squatting rights in an old industrial space in New York’s East Village. Straight and gay, artists and vagabonds, they want more out of life but don’t always know how to get it. They let too many things get in the way--drugs, careless sex, emotional hang-ups and more--until they’ve learned the lesson woven into a gorgeous vocal tapestry in the final chorus: “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.”

As Roger, the musician who falls in love with Mimi, Dean Balkwill is a powerful mixture of toughness and vulnerability. His emotions bottle up inside until he chokes on them and tears well in his eyes. As Mark, the wannabe filmmaker who rooms with Roger, Trey Ellett is earnest and puppyish, with a few endearing strokes of geekiness around the edges. As Tom Collins, their cyberage philosopher of a friend, Jackson is street-smart yet wholly romantic; he finds his perfect mate in the drag-queen Angel of Shaun Earl, who is openhearted and oh-so-dazzlingly, bewitchingly chic.

The most frustrating thing about “Rent” on tour is that it’s playing such cavernous halls as the Ahmanson, the Orange County Performing Arts Center and the 2,100-seat Shubert. Though this is, in many ways, a big, noisy show, it is, at its core, an intimate collection of love stories. Buy seats as close to the stage as possible.

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“Rent,” Shubert Theatre, ABC Entertainment Center, 2020 Avenue of the Stars, Century City. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Ends Feb. 28. $30-$70, with 26 same-day, front-row seats for $20 at the box office two hours before curtain. (800) 447-7400. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

Dean Balkwill: Roger Davis

Trey Ellett: Mark Cohen

Mark Leroy Jackson: Tom Collins

Daphne Rubin-Vega: Mimi Marquez

Erin Keaney: Maureen Johnson

Shaun Earl: Angel Schunard

Kamilah Martin: Joanne Jefferson

Brian M. Love: Benjamin Coffin III

With: Christian Anderson, Evan D’Angeles, Kristoffer Cusick, Danielle Lee Greaves, Alan Mingo Jr., Lambert Moss, Karen Olivo, Cheri Smith and Alicia Westelman.

A Jeffrey Seller, Kevin McCollum, Allan S. Gordon and New York Theatre Workshop production. Book, music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson, with concept and original lyrics by Billy Aronson. Dramaturg: Lynn M. Thomson. Musical arrangements: Steve Skinner. Director: Michael Greif. Choreographer: Marlies Yearby. Musical direction: Boko Suzuki. Set: Paul Clay. Costumes: Angela Wendt. Lights: Blake Burba. Sound: Kurt Fischer. Stage manager: Evan Ensign.