Open with a song

The cast and crew of Butte College’s production of Rent—the touching and high-energy rock musical that for 12 years was a Broadway mainstay—effectively kicked the tires, test drove and otherwise put Butte College’s brand-spanking-new Arts Center theater through its paces on opening night Nov. 5.

Director and 30-year Butte College faculty member Barry Piccinino no longer has to take his cast and crew to Paradise, Chico or Oroville to put on his big-stage productions.

“This is a dynamic beginning of a new era at Butte College, not only for Rent, but [also] for productions in the future,” Piccinino said proudly as the lights went down.

With an ensemble cast of about 40, Rent was well received by the full house (about 200 for this particular seating configuration) with hearty applause and cheers following many of the production’s nonstop song-and-dance numbers.

And rightfully so. Piccinino, musical director Tamara Allspaugh (who conducted a multitalented live band), choreographer Melinda Buzan, light and sound designer Mike Johnson and scenic designer David Beasley provided a superb framework for the energetic thespians, most of whom are Butte College Drama Department students, to shine. All of that, combined with the new theater’s state-of-the-art lighting and sound equipment (the audio was among the best I’ve ever heard in a stage production) boosted the quality of the affair.

The black-box theater (kind of like Chico State’s Wismer Theatre but on steroids) can be rearranged to operate in different shapes. In addition to the traditional stage-audience setup featured for Rent, there are also theater-in-the-round, or audience-on-three-sides configurations.

The stage production of Rent, based loosely on the opera La Bohème, takes place in a gritty Lower East Side Manhattan neighborhood in the early 1990s and follows the joys and tragedies within a close-knit group of have-nots dealing with various personal struggles—poverty, drugs, AIDS, love sought and love rejected.

It is dually set in a makeshift homeless camp as well as a neighboring, seedy industrial loft of aspiring amateur filmmaker Mark Cohen (played admirably by Andy Hafer) and aspiring, HIV-positive songwriter Roger Davis (skillfully portrayed by Nick Brunner). Adding to the tension, Mark and Roger’s old pal Benny Coffin (Sean Doughty), who married into wealth and owns the lot at which the homeless have squatted, reneges on his standing offer of free rent unless Mark and Roger can quash a planned protest against allowing Benny to develop the property.

The script and the multitiered set allowed for steady action that sometimes had more than 20 people vocalizing and bounding about the stage at once, while at other times the spotlight focused on one of several pairs of lead characters.

Standouts included Stephanie Adams, the production’s strongest performer on this night, who played Joanne Jefferson, a lawyer-of-the-poor whose lesbian relationship has countless ups and downs. Her onstage partner, Jessica Smith, was also excellent as performance artist Maureen Johnson, giving an outrageously bold monologue to end the first act. Kelli Fossum-Trausch dazzled in song and dramatic savvy as Mimi Marquez, a beautiful young HIV-positive dancer whose aspirations for love are repeatedly short-circuited by her drug addiction. Tyler D. Farmer splendidly carried out the role of drag queen Angel, who entered the stage as a sexy, confident songstress for a fabulous version of “Today for You” but later became the musical’s most tragic figure. Robyn Hafer, as Mark’s mom, and Kayla Mahoney, as Alexi Darling, were spot-on in their comedic singing voice-mails.

A few unpolished singing voices were the only drawback to an otherwise moving and exhilarating production. But off-pitch passages were more than counteracted by the young cast’s moxie and confidence.

The Butte College players effectively exemplified Rent’s message of acceptance, love and fun, even in hard times. And to those who may sneer at and stereotype those with AIDS, the cast offers the message: “Let he among us without sin be the first to condemn! La vie bohème!”