BDE Productions Delivers a Resonant Performance of RENT

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RENT may always be what it is, but it benefits from not being treated as a museum piece.

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It's almost a rite of passage that every theatre kid goes through a loving RENT phase and a hating RENT phase. The memes of "Benny is a hero, the Bohemians are trash" have circulated for years, and I won't deny there are little grains of truth in there; this IS after all a show where killing rich people's pets is treated as effective praxis and a good prank. But if RENT really were as bad and as simple as its most vocal detractors say, it wouldn't have been the defining musical of the nineties, back when you only really got one big, culturally relevant show per ten years. While Jonathan Larson 's premature death during the Broadway development process means RENT is forever frozen in time as a work that needed polishing it will never get, there is no denying that, generally speaking, it works and works well. Unfortunately, the combined reverence for the deceased Larson and the constant adherence to Michael Greif 's now-iconic physical production and aesthetic have turned the musical into a museum piece in all too many productions. Thankfully, BDE Productions and their director Peter Matthew Smith have looked at the show not as a perfectly formed memorial to the late Larson, but as a musical just like any other. It hasn't been aggressively contemporized, simply treated as any contemporary work that need not be slavishly reproduced. Think of this RENT the way you'd think of a good Rocky Horror : you'll see plenty that is fresh and new and not identical to every other, but you'll still get the iconic touches where they matter most. (Case in point: Mark's still got his scarf and Mimi still pole-dances on a fire escape, but other cliches like the Fuzzy Bikini Lady and the Brechtian miming of physical violence as a trash can is instead punched have been happily consigned to history.)

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The eight bohemians assembled here are quite possibly the strongest Rent cast I've seen since the original, accompanied by a small but fluid ensemble of six. Alexander E. Podolinski grounds Roger's brooding and self-seriousness in a real sense of presence and vulnerability, never leaning too hard into the wannabe rock-god cliches of the role. This is a role it's exceptionally hard to play without at times imitating Adam Pascal 's idiosyncratic vocals, but Podolinski does the hard work of making this role his own. Opposite him is Anthony Marino , late of Assassins with Rogue Artists. Marino seems tailor-made for the role of the nerdy, chronically horny and sarcastic filmmaker; while never neglecting the more serious moments in Act 2, he brings his signature comic charm to the chaotic Christmas Eve journey of Act 1. Smith does not squander Marino's physical comedy chops either, adding a pratfall-in-reverse onto a table in La Vie Boheme that is one of the highlight moments of Marino's whole track.

No one brings gravitas like Brady D. Patsy, and Collins is a role that enables him to work the whole range of both his singing voice and his dramatic presence. Collins is a guy we meet as a droll, philosophizing boho update on Tom Waits by way of Seal in Act 1, only to see him descend (almost in the background) into total emotional collapse over Act 2. It's a hell of a role but Patsy is a hell of a performer. His fellow performer Sati Rogerson must also be commended for doing the opposite, making a fully-realized character out of too MUCH material instead of too little. Benny's part onstage is overwritten instead of underwritten; Larson and company made him an extremely ambivalent figure by perpetually swinging back and forth on his behavior and portrayal. He talks almost as much as the rest of the cast, but is ultimately a cipher. In Rogerson's hands, Benny is a man who believes 100% that he is doing the right thing at all times, a pragmatist but not a fascist. (In an anachronistic but clever costume update, rather than the windbreaker of the OBC, costumer Michell Nowakowski has given Rogerson the sleeveless vest and oblong sunglasses most associated with Kanye West , another countercultural figure who moved rightward.)

Marissa Buchheit finds endless layers to dig into as Mimi. She's a complex character that could look one-dimensional or even misogynistic if not played and directed well: a semi-homeless BDSM dancer and hustler, an exhibitionist and a heroin addict who makes the lines between her personal love life and professional sex life as blurry as they can get. Buchheit has to navigate the fact that we don't see "the real Mimi" until the very end of the first act; instead, we get her as a manipulative flirt in "Light My Candle," then a performatively erotic seductress and stripper in "Out Tonight", and a platitude-spouting New Age girl in "Another Day." But when she and Roger finally get real with each other at the end of "La Vie Boheme," it's not metallic overheated sparks that start to fly, it's the slow blossoming of a sunset instead. On the other end of the spectrum is Ruth Waiwaiole's endearingly one-note Maureen. There is no masking, performativity or nuance to Maureen, and that's why everyone (in universe and out) is kind of obsessed with her. Even for the first half of Act 1, when Maureen is a silent onstage presence, Waiwaiole leans into her extreme confidence and charisma, making her into a force of nature even before her tremendously ill-conceived Laurie Anderson knockoff "Over the Moon." (Just in case you're a young Renthead, two things can be true at once: "Over the Moon" is intentionally bad but takes a GREAT performer to sell the piece.) Chelsea Davis runs in the opposite direction with Joanne, avoiding any big comedy or vocal pyrotechnics until "Take Me or Leave Me," when both she and Joanne let loose for maybe the first time. Holding back so much during a heart-and-voice-on-the-sleeve show is a brave choice, and it pays off for Davis here.

Lastly, there have been whole dissertations written about the role of Angel. What is Angel's specific sexuality? What is Angel's gender? How are we supposed to feel about the dog incident? There wasn't as much vocabulary, iconography or general queer-theory awareness in 1995, let alone in 1990 when the show is vaguely set, as there is now, so Angel is alternately portrayed as an exceptionally femme gay man, as a drag queen, and as more implicitly trans in a way that sometimes feels interchangeable. (The safest bet is probably to say Angel is genderqueer and leave it at that.) Adrian Escalona, a recent Point Park graduate, steps into Angel's high heels with aplomb, delivering a "Today 4 U" full of death drops and all the physical language of drag from voguing to the Jellicle Ball. Escalona's falsetto wails are out of this world, harmonizing incredibly well with Patsy's deeply-rooted bass-baritone.

Under Robert Neumeyer's baton, the band sounds great, legitimately rocking with none of the slightly anemic quality of the OBC. This is RENT not as "a thing that happened in the nineties reproduced" but as a musical that exists within the canon on its own terms, making a vital argument for its own continued relevance thirty years later. You can feel in this show why the original musical became a viral hit. Even as AIDS has thankfully been reduced from a death sentence to a livable condition, Collins's activism still feels timely, especially as the imagined VR menace of 1989 has turned itself into the AI menace of 2026. The message still rings true, even though I relate more to the neurotic and nihilistic side characters than the proactive and hope-chasing leads: why choose fear? Live in the real world instead of the digital one.

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/pittsburgh/article/Review-RENT-Stays-Relevant-at-BDE-Productions-20261002)._