525,600 minutes...

How to measure the Niles North production of Rent? Despite my earlier comments about its possible inappropriateness, it has to be probably the coolest school musical choice possibly ever. If I was a young Viking in Niles North's thespian troupe, I would have been (wait for it...) over the moon.

And the kids did a good job with the show. Some really great voices there, actually. Although the posters proclaimed it to be the "high school version" there weren't a lot of drastic cuts to the material. Language, mostly - so the Tango: Maureen had the following lines:

"This is weird."
"It's weird."
"Very weird."
"Really weird."

And in La Vie Boheme, Joanne informed them:
"Benny called the cops."
To which Maureen replied "That jerk!"

Some other stuff in La Vie was also cut/edited, but not as much as we thought, surprisingly. The Act 2 orgy scene (whatever it's really called, I'm sure y'all know which one I mean) was cut (no surprises there.). It was a teeny tiny bit uncomfortable watching the young Mimi shimmying around to "Out Tonight" (which is a huge, huge song. Those "Ooowwww-Oooooouttt Tonight"s are fairly hard to sing, and range-y as all heck. She was all right.) Plus, the poor girl was traipsing around on this crazy scaffolded set in sky high heeled hot pink boots. I kept watching her and hoping she wasn't going to fall over. I wouldn't even be able to stand still on those boots, let alone prance around the stage and climb around etc. Brava.

So anyway. It must be a challenge to put on a school musical - finding something relevant, and interesting so that the kids want to be in it but also so that people want to come and see it. I would think that you would also want to find something so that a lot of people could be in it (although this Rent did not have a huge ensemble, there were still roles for a good number of kids). It was pretty ambitious, doing Rent, but I think they did a good job with it. And they made me cry at the end. It's too bad, isn't it, that Jonathan Larson never got to see the huge success of this show, and how it is still influencing and inspiring a new generation of theater goers.

They did the pitch for Seasons of Concern (which I think is part of BC/EFA but don't quote me there) and I really really hate when the actors break your post-show bubble by standing on stage and talking at you, but I am not made of stone, and so I gave them a little $$ on the way out.

I left pretty impressed with Niles North and its theater department - their Spring play will be "The Merry Wives of Windsor" -- Shakespeare. We never did no Shakespeare at Niles West!