Aleksandra the Great’s Exploits

What a nice way to talk about the weather—it snowed!—and the Rent movie. The streets are perfectly clear; they were clear when I looked outside at 10:30 this morning, but a thin layer of snow settled on the roofs and rooftop furnishings and on the cars that haven’t moved today. Although my weather information service tells me that there’s a 100% chance of precipitation now, it isn’t snowing. I suppose that’s for the best, though. Snow would just be one more distraction to keep me from doing homework.

And now, Rent. My ideas were not settled enough upon first seeing it to post, so I had to wait until I saw it a second time (Friday night as a hall outing). Since we who saw it Wednesday night talked about it so much afterwards, I won’t bother repeating all that we thought. I did think, and the second viewing confirmed, that the film offers a very negative portrayal of Benny. In the play he gets the chance to redeem himself by paying for Angel’s funeral. In the movie, it seems Collins has enough money and doesn’t need Benny’s help. And then, unless I wasn’t able to follow this twice now, Benny just disappears. At least in the play they make it known that Muffy found out about Benny’s affair and had his location switched.

I had a problem the first time I saw it with the fact that Mimi intentionally went to Roger about the candle. The second time I realized why I disliked it, and it has to do with something else that bothers me—the cutting out of several key songs. Before I get to that, though, I think the film did a nice job of showing that Mimi and Angel knew each other before they knew any of the other characters. In the play it’s kind of hard to tell when they met. It seems from the things she says at Angel’s funeral that Mimi met Angel at a different time than everyone else, but there isn’t any proof in the play. In the film, at the end of “Rent,” Angel points his drumsticks up as a greeting to Mimi, so it makes sense that they were friends.

Back to the problems. When would Mark ever have gone to the Cat Scratch Club? He was dating Maureen for a while before the play/movie takes place, and it just doesn’t seem like something a person like Mark would do. And why does he know enough about Mimi to affirm that she’s going to Maureen’s performance? In the play, Mimi doesn’t know Maureen; she isn’t part of their group of friends at all except perhaps if she knew Angel previously. All this is described in the “Christmas Bells” song that was cut, not to mention the humorous bit in which Roger simulates Mimi’s dancing while she’s talking to Mark to tell him what she does.

“Halloween” describes how chance-dependent the last year was. Instead of Mimi’s just needing her candle lit and knocking at any random door, in the film she intentionally goes to Roger. Is that why “Halloween” had to be cut, because Mark’s questions were easily answered? The Mimi-Roger relationship is far too romantic and friendly in “Light My Candle.” Stage Mimi just wants a light, and then she tries to leave. Film Mimi hangs around Roger’s apartment, already suggesting what isn’t supposed to come until “Out Tonight.” And Roger almost immediately gives her his coat! Roger is supposed to be withdrawn and not interested in socializing. What good is staying in his apartment for however long (seven months? a year?) if he’s that chivalrous to the first woman he meets? [When Mimi climbs into his apartment at the end of “Out Tonight” he smiles a little. At first I thought this was going along the same lines that he’s just looking for a nice girlfriend, but I realized that it works well with “Another Day.” He is interested in Mimi, but he isn’t prepared for a relationship, especially not one with another drug addict. Good acting on Adam’s part.]

After the movie on Friday a few of the students and the faculty fellows who sponsored the outing went out for pizza and to discuss the film. Everyone agreed that the Santa Fe part was ridiculous, and some of the kids brought up a Britney Spears music video that looks like it shared the same set.

A couple of years ago my parents were picking me (and probably Christina, though I can’t remember some details) up from skiing. At the base of the stairs to the parking lot was a fallen pair of goggles. Although the right thing to do would have been to turn them in to lost and found, my mother and I probably walked past, commenting apathetically about what a shame it was that someone lost his* goggles. My step-father, though, saw it as his gain, and he took the goggles. I’m not sure how he justified that to himself; my mother and I couldn’t believe he’d do such a thing. After all, those goggles belonged to someone else, and what if the person realized it and came back searching for them in vain? My mother and I, in later conversations of the found/stolen goggles, agreed that his taking them bothered us so much because either of us—especially me—could easily have been in the former owner’s position.

Last Tuesday at 2am I realized that my trusty TI 83 Plus (I never did upgrade to an 89) was not in my bag. It’s never anywhere else, and since I’d used it in my NatSci lab earlier that day, I knew it had to be either there or in someone else’s possession. There was nothing to be done at that hour, though, so I went to sleep, planning to go back to the lab to check for it before work on Wednesday. So I went back to the Silver Center the next morning and up to the lab room, but it was locked, and apparently no security guard in the building has keys to those rooms. Significantly more upset now that my plan was failing, I decided to call in late to work and wait around for the lab to open up at 9. When it did, the man with the keys—he might have been a kind of supervising TA or at least one with power, but he didn’t seem old enough to be a professor—said he hadn’t found any TI 83s. He opened a drawer and looked at the most recently lost calculators, one of which, he said, belonged to a girl and was lost just last week.

Then he went to another drawer, one filled with calculators. He picked up one, checked to make sure there was no name in it, replaced its batteries, and handed it to me, saying something along the lines of “so many people lose these calculators and never come back to claim them.” So I’ve basically adopted this orphaned calculator.

As I made my way through the park I couldn’t help thinking about possible scenarios involving kids and their lost calculators. Perhaps a student left his calculator because he was in a hurry to catch a train somewhere, and as he was rushing down the subway stairs he slipped and landed at the bottom with all of his bones broken. Naturally the kid would have to stay home in bed and wouldn’t be able to search for a missing calculator, and what if he didn’t have any friends or acquaintances who would be willing to retrieve it for him? And now I’ve gone and taken the calculator from this immobile, friendless kid. Thoughts like this kept plaguing me, so I came up with these justifications:

1. The calculator must have been there for a long time. The man who gave it to me would not give away the calculator that was lost only a week before, so mine must have been lost a while ago.
2. There is no name in it. Even if someone came back, he would never know whether the calculator he received was his or not.
3. I looked for my calculator. I was back at that building at 8am the next day. Surely if someone had looked for the calculator I now have, he would have found it.
4. My calculator now belongs to someone else. The number of calculators out there is still the same. Besides, there is a possibility that my original calculator is now in the hands of the person whose calculator I have.
5. I have almost exhausted all possible fates of my calculator. Tomorrow I will check with my other lab partner, and if the calculator is not in his possession, then I will accept that I am not likely to see it again. (Of course, if he does happen to have it, I’ll return the one from lost and found.)

I know that my reasons for accepting the calculator don’t fully negate my being a hypocrite, but what else can I do? This calculator might just have sat in the drawer until TI 83s become obsolete, never to be used again. At least with me it serves a purpose.

*The appropriate female word should follow an “or” here and in several other cases; to prevent overly-garbled sentences, I left that out.

America Reads is such a nice program. They pay well for an interesting job that doesn’t require night or weekend time. Better than that, though, they give out free tickets to RENT. My friend Sisi and I got tickets this morning (she was there early, so we got row C of the mezzanine; thanks!) and went to the 8pm show tonight. During the first act, mostly, I noticed few things about the show in general and of course about the actors. If you haven’t seen it yet, I wouldn’t recommend reading the post; I tried not to make it spoil anything, but still, you wouldn’t want to see it with my opinions already in your head. Otherwise, if you’re interested in these minor details, enjoy! [Note: I object to not italicizing RENT in the title, but I really didn’t have time to figure out how to make that work and I wanted to post tonight. Perhaps having it in all caps will suffice.]

Acting
Mark (Matt Caplan) worried me at first. He …well, he practically lisped some of his early lines. Not that that would have been so terrible, but I was prepared to hear a rather poor Mark. But! he lost the lisp very early on (I’m talking about by the time “Rent” was over), and was actually reminiscent of Anthony Rapp at some points. He was the first actor to make me really understand the “She got you out” line in “Christmas Bells.” He made it seem like he was thanking god or some higher power that Roger had finally left the house; before I had never quite understood what he meant by it besides that Roger was outside now. It’s hard to explain. If you had seen him do what he did, and had been as confused as I had been, you would have appreciated it.

Roger (Cary Shields) was a bit shouty, but it was an improvement from last time. I’m not sure if it was the same actor or not; my other playbills are at home. He took the liberty of adding some notes to “One Song Glory,” but I’m a lot more tolerant of that now than I was four years ago when I first saw RENT. Other than that, he was pretty good.

Mimi (Karmine Alers) has been in the show for a while. I mean, we’ve seen her before, though I don’t know how many times. Since I went in knowing that I thought she was good, I easily let slide the deviations in “Light My Candle.” She doesn’t do “Out Tonight” as well as Rosario, but I guess it’s different when she’s actually jumping around on stage.

Maureen (Ava Gaudet) and Joanne (Merle Dandridge) worked really well together. Maureen had dark hair, like Idina, and did well in “Over the Moon.” I almost considered mooing; maybe next time. Angel (Justin Johnston) and Collins (Destan Owens) also were good together. Angel did not make his voice high enough at some points, but he was very funny in his actions. Benny (D’Monroe) was, like Roger, shouty at times. And he changed a line, saying “We’re out of luck, Alison, the protest is on.” Where does he get off changing Jonathan Larson’s lyrics? I guess where they all get off changing his music….

Colin Hanlon (omg!) had a few minor parts. For those who weren’t there, he was absolutely amazing last summer. He was the closest representation to Anthony Rapp’s original Mark of anyone I’d seen or heard. I couldn’t see him quite as well as last time, and of course his stage time was greatly reduced, but his version of Gordon was equally well-presented. It’s a shame he got shunted to such a small part.

General
This production was particularly interesting since approximately 200 NYU kids were there. I’m of course referring to the whole “couch potatoes at New York University” part. It got some laughs. I had actually completely forgotten that line, its having been cut from the movie and my listening to that soundtrack lately to prepare. The audience was very receptive in general tonight. You could tell that a lot of them had seen RENT before, since they anticipated entrances, etc. It wasn’t only that, though. People laughed a lot at certain parts (like Angel’s funny movements or Maureen’s role in the beginning of “La Vie Boheme”).

It bothers me that in the movie soundtrack, dialogue parts like “Could never be a theater person” are cut out of the songs. It seems to bother the actors in the show now too. Some of those parts were said really loudly, as if the actors were trying to compensate for their being cut from the movie. Something really pleased me, though. There are a few lines in “Christmas Bells” that are very hard to hear on the OBC cd and even in the show if you aren’t watching Mark’s and Roger’s mouths. Tonight those lines were the loudest; it was the first time I could clearly hear them, and I felt sure that a lot of the other theater-goers picked them up as well. [Oh! Ricky just reminded me about how the renovations were to fix the sound system. Perhaps that’s why those lines were much more clear and loud.]

I also noticed two things about the choreography tonight. I never noticed before, but the waiter in “La Vie Boheme” joins in with the bohemians in singing against Benny and Mr. Grey. That’s not really a big deal, just some pleasant interesting thing. What is kind of absurd to me, though, is “Santa Fe.” It really is just like Collins, Angel, and Mark sitting in the lot singing, and then all of these uninvolved homeless people start dancing around behind them. I know that a lot of people criticize musical theater because people just burst into song and everyone knows the lyrics and the movements, but this is different. It’s pretty clear in this song that it isn’t one of those impossible musical moments, and yet everyone suddenly starts dancing and singing. I don’t know, but from my experience homeless people don’t jump off their benches and start dancing when musicians set to work in the park. Maybe lot homeless people are different.

Most of the details I picked up on were in the first act. Perhaps I was too absorbed by the time the second act came around that I didn’t bother with petty differences. Overall, it was a good production. I can’t say it was the best I’ve ever seen, because I know the cast last summer with Colin Hanlon as Mark was probably better, and that was the best. But of course I can’t say that it was worse, either, because that would be a disappointment. So, it was good, it was different. Seven times now.

I walked through Washington Square Park today on my way to dinner and Japanese, and as usual I was stopped by someone. This time it was a woman, probably in college, who stopped me very politely. [I haven’t decided yet whether it’s better to kindly refuse people and walk past, or to stop and listen and then refuse them (since I’m rarely interested in what they’re saying). So, I listened to her proposition.] She said she was doing a film project that required people to talk about something traumatic that had happened to them and how they got through it.

So I thought for a moment. I didn’t really want to stop and help her—possibly because it would require my being filmed, and I can’t really deal with that—but I wasn’t in a rush or anything, so I could have. Except there was one problem: I couldn’t think of anything really traumatic through which I had gone. Sure, my parents are divorced. I thought about that, but all that probably caused life to be a lot better for me than it would have been if they were still married. And anyway, it isn’t like I even knew the details. That was their trauma, not mine.

I told the girl that I couldn’t really think of anything. She tried suggesting possible, common situations that I could relate to her future audience. She asked if I had ever had boy troubles, namely if I had ever liked someone who hadn’t liked me back. Well, sure, I had, but in my mind those sorts of problems were too trivial to bother recording. I guess if she wanted commonplace, average troubles, those stories would be great, but how much of that could anyone really listen to? I know it is unfair of me to judge “boy problems” as trivial. They very well may not be for some or most people. In my experience, however, even my serious romantic difficulties do not seem so horrible in retrospect, so how could I deem them traumatic enough for her film?

I finished reading Sister Carrie yesterday. It really makes me worry about homeless people, and the sad paths that lead to their reaching that state. So, when I talked to the woman today, none of whatever I have gone through seemed so bad at all. And I know it isn’t. I thought about a woman I had seen earlier walking with her head so far down you couldn’t see her face, pushing a cart with around twenty plastic bages fixed to it. She might take offense, but I think the story of her troubles would be far greater than that of mine. I don’t think the young woman with the film project was looking for Dreiser’s sort of problems, though.