The Wild Blog in the West

I have a somewhat complicated attitude toward RENT .  Had you asked me even two years ago, I would have said flat out that I hated it.  I hated its confused storytelling, its whiny protagonists, and its overplayed affirmation songs. I saw RENT live for the first and only time in London in 1998.  I was able to see most of the original cast, save Daphne Rubin-Vega's Mimi, which was fortunate.  I remember feeling bored and confused, somewhat moved during the second half, but only able to remember two songs afterward: "One Song Glory" and "Light My Candle."   RENT  wasn't a revolution -- it was a mess. It seemed almost set up to fail.  Creator Jonathan Larson, a promising Broadway writer and composer, died at a young age on the morning of  RENT 's opening in 1996.  His death added another layer of tragedy to his musical, which dealt substantially with young characters facing their mortality, and fueled the legend of RENT as something Real and Important

Or at least one career. For the 25th anniversary of Les Miserables , it was not enough for Cameron Mackintosh to give his musical a makeover and send it back out on tour.  He also needed to commemorate it with yet another major concert event.  Yet instead of choosing to reuse the Albert Hall as a venue, and a cast of current well-regarded Les Miz performers, Mackintosh decided that this concert should be larger than life.  This meant a much bigger venue and a little more star power. Enter the O2 Arena.  The O2 began life as the Millennium Dome in the Greenwich Peninsula of London.  The Millennium Dome was meant to be a celebration of progress and forward thinking along the lines of the World's Fair, filled with exhibits showcasing Who We Are, What We Do, and Where We Live.  Unfortunately, the exhibits lacked content and visitors alike, and in 2000, the Dome closed down.  In the early 2000s, the giant Dome complex was redeveloped as an indoor sports and entertainment center, a

Around 2010, Cameron Mackintosh and company decided to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of Les Miserables  by updating the score, set design, and costumes and sending the musical back out on tour. Then in late 2010, Mackintosh staged a concert at the O2 Arena in London, complete with the same types of speeches and performances that were a part of the 10th Anniversary Concert.  A CD of the Tour was issued, as was a DVD of the Concert.  The Tour and Concert were completely separate entities, but thanks to some poor promotion (at least on PBS in the United States), many fans thought that they were the same thing.  That is not so surprising, since the DVD and CD of the 10th Anniversary Concert contained the same cast and songs.  When fans bought the Tour CD thinking that it contained the Concert cast, they were outraged.  The result was several reviews that rather unfairly maligned the 25th Anniversary Tour for not being the 25th Anniversary Concert.  While the Tour CD is hardly flawl

So Les Miserables premiered all over the world and became an enormous hit.  Then all of a sudden, 10 years had passed.  Cameron Mackintosh simply could not let that anniversary go by unannounced, so in October 1995, a concert was held to honor the musical. The concert would take place at the Royal Albert Hall in London.  The cast would consist of either performers who had originated their roles, or performers who were standouts.  A DVD of the performance would be released in 1998, possibly in conjunction with the CD.  This would be the first major cast recording of the musical to be done live. The staging was different from the usual musical staging since, of course, this was a concert.  Therefore, the performers stood at microphones in costume while other performers sat behind them waiting for their turn.  There was minimal action to explain what was going on, except for spliced-in reenactments of certain parts of the musical (such as the runaway cart sequence).  The frills were

I'm embarrassed to say that for years, I ignored the Les Miserables  Complete Symphonic Recording based on the mistaken belief that it was just the orchestrations.  The orchestrations are lovely, but I wanted to hear singing.  Fortunately, a few years ago, I realized the error of my ways and downloaded the Complete Symphonic Recording onto my iTunes. Unlike the past two English-language recordings, the Complete Symphonic Recording is not of a specific cast.  Cameron Mackintosh had originally intended to do the recording using the Australian cast, but ended up recording the album in three different locations around the world, using an international cast.  As a result, actors from diverse locations as Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States were brought together seamlessly, more or less. As the title states, this is the first album to contain the entire musical, at least the musical as it existed in 1989, following its debut on Broadway.  Parts of the musica