Revised musical ‘Rent in Concert’ rocks the Shubert with a big cast and even bigger orchestra

Thirty years after the landmark off-Broadway and Broadway productions of “Rent” premiered, it’s nice to have a different way to experience Jonathan Larson’s game-changing musical theater masterpiece.

Revivals that sought to either update the show or soften the AIDS, gentrification and gender diversity themes that gave “Rent” its power in the first place didn’t last. The version of “Rent” playing the Shubert Theatre in New Haven seems much more respectful of the forces that made the show so revolutionary. It takes a piece that was always based around songs, vivid personal stories of love and community and vibrant human energy and makes it even leaner and tougher.

“Rent in Concert”, described as “a full symphonic concert event performed with live cast celebrating Jonathan Larson’s groundbreaking Tony and Pulitzer Prize Award winning musical,” has a single performance at the Shubert Theatre on Friday night at 7 p.m.

The first New York production of “Rent,” still the template for most regional theater and college theater productions today, was rather sparse in a way that makes a concert version less of a shock. The show’s original scenic designer, Paul Clay, created scaffolding and ingenious platforms like a long table to provide distinct playing areas with no ostentatious details. When “Rent” was given a live TV production in 2019, it at first seemed like the broadcast version was going in a different direction with walls and furniture and props, but it was a sly reference to the glories of the original stage version — within minutes the walls flew up into the wings of the TV studio and “Rent” reverted to its scaled-down, open-ended original vision. Bare stages, mic stands, street clothes and raw energy have always been part of the pure “Rent” experience.

Much of “Rent” takes place on the cold, unfeeling streets of New York’s East Village in the 1980s. Larson — who wrote the show’s book, music and lyrics, nursed it through years of workshops and rewrites then died from an undiagnosed heart problem on the eve of its triumphant opening night at New York Theatre Workshop on Feb. 13, 1996 — based “Rent” on a variety of sources, including his own life experiences as a struggling artist in the city, but a primary one was Puccini’s 1896 opera “La bohème.”

Alex Lugo, who sings the role of Maureen in “Rent in Concert,” is new to this version but spent a couple of years with the long-running anniversary tour of “Rent” that criss-crossed the country for years and played Connecticut multiple times, including at the Shubert, The Bushnell and Waterbury Palace. That tour, which withstood a COVID hiatus, ran for so long that it began as a 20th anniversary tour and ended as a 25th anniversary one. For Lugo, getting a job in the tour’s ensemble meant interrupting their theater studies at New York University. They took a year, finished up school and have been working steadily in the theater since then.

Lugo’s next big gig after the “Rent” anniversary tour was the Broadway and touring productions of “Hadestown.” They were with that show when it played The Bushnell in Hartford in 2023 and the Shubert in New Haven in 2024. They were just finishing up with “Hadestown” when this new “Rent” opportunity arose. They had understudied the leading romantic role of Mimi on the earlier tour but “I’ve never done Maureen,” Lugo said. It’s not a role they thought they’d ever be considered for. “As a Black, queer, non-binary performer, it’s super exciting to be playing Maureen.”

In “Rent,” Maureen is a free-spirited downtown NYC performance artist. Her ex-boyfriend Mark (the main narrator of the diverse events in the musical) and her current girlfriend Joanne meet because Joanne needs help with the technical equipment for a benefit performance Maureen is giving to protest the eviction of homeless people in the neighborhood due to a real estate deal involving another character in the show, Bennie. Lugo notes that Maureen’s performance art, encapsulated in the song “Over the Moon,” is meaningful to them because of “the weight it carries with specific communities of that time.”

Lugo said rehearsals for “Rent in Concert” began with “drilling the music, getting the rhythms right. This is a rock opera, so it has to be done intentionally in a way that sustains the singers’ voices.” Besides Lugo, the cast includes Tommy Kaiser as the artsy filmmaker Mark, Will Hastreiter as Mark’s guitarist roommate Roger, Jasiana Caraballo as the dancer Mimi with whom Roger becomes involved, Candice Woods as Joanne, Kris Carrasco as the vivacious drag queen/street percussionist Angel and Terrance Johnson as the science wiz who becomes Angel’s lover, Tom Collins. There’s also a five-person ensemble made up of Chachi Delgado, Joseph DePietro, Rodney McKinner, Nisa Mercado and Neema Muteti. Like Lugo, many of the performers have done “Rent” before on national tours or regional productions.

“Rent in Concert” is performed by that dozen-strong cast plus a 19-piece onstage orchestra. “It’s a different scope,” Lugo explained. “On the road with the other tour, I think we had drums, keyboards and two guitars.” The whole show is delivered, clearly and with well-defined characters, and without the need for someone reading the stage directions aloud or other elements often associated with concert versions or readings. In this case, the original musical can transition easily to a concert staging.

Lugo insisted that, despite the different set-up, “Rent in Concert” will still be “Rent” “as you know and love it. It’s really, really exciting to be doing this. As a theater kid in general and especially as a queer theater kid, ‘Rent’ holds a big place in my heart.”

“Rent in Concert” will be performed on Feb. 21 at 7 p.m. at the Shubert Theatre, 247 College St., New Haven. $42.30-$113.70. shubert.com.

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