‘Rocky Horror,‘ ‘Rent’ hit area stages

Two of popular culture’s most enduring musicals are hitting the Hill City this weekend.

Renaissance Theatre is performing “Rent,” while Randolph College’s Wildcat Theatre will present “The Rocky Horror Show.”
Both shows have fervent followings and pushed the envelopes during their initial runs — “Rent” for addressing controversial topics like AIDS and homosexuality, and “Rocky Horror” for its inherent naughtiness (its main character, mad scientist Frank N. Furter, is a bisexual transvestite alien who, over the course of the show, sleeps with both his fellow male and female leads).

The Renaissance and Randolph crews have been hard at work mounting their respective shows, and we checked in with them last week.

Forming a community

Two weeks before opening night, the cast of “Rent” is rehearsing what director Brooke Farmer says is one of the production’s most touching songs, “Will I?”

The whole ensemble fills the space — made up as an old warehouse where several of the characters live — singing lyrics that express the pain and fear of living with AIDS.

“Will I lose my dignity, will someone care?” they sing. “Will I wake tomorrow from this nightmare?”

“It’s a beautiful moment in the first act,” Farmer says, “that really brings everything to a stop.”

The landmark rock musical is about a group of young artists and musicians struggling to survive in Manhattan’s East Village while dealing with poverty, drug addiction, AIDS and homophobia.

“It deals with stuff that had never been dealt with before on stage,” Farmer says. “It’s dealing with it in a respectful way.”

And, she adds, “despite all of that, it’s not a depressing show.”

“Rent” debuted off-Broadway in 1996 — a labor of love for creator Jonathan Larsen, who worked on it for seven years but died before its premiere — and made the move to Broadway within a few months, where it ran for 12 years and more than 5,000 performances. It won four Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and a Pulitzer Prize, and it is often credited with introducing a younger generation to musical theater.

The show closed on Broadway last year and Renaissance owner Tom Nowell says they scooped up the rights to perform it here as soon as they were made available.

“They e-mailed us and, within an hour and a half, we had made a commitment to do the show,” he says.

Opening night is Friday at 8 p.m., with a reception at 7:15 (see box for more details and show dates).

Both Nowell and Farmer agree that Renaissance’s intimate set-up — not to mention the fact that it’s a renovated warehouse — is the perfect spot for “Rent.”

“It’s about a small group of people, and … even though it’s a Broadway musical, the creator wrote it to be in a small space because he wanted the audience to feel like (they’re) a part of this community, this family,” Farmer says. “You put them on a huge stage, and they get lost.”

Here, almost the entire room is the stage, with rafters and walkways going out into the space where the audience sits. In any given scene, one corner of the room is a fire escape where the characters look out into the city, while another is the meeting place for an AIDS support group.

“I’ve had a great time designing this because it’s so different,” Nowell says. “It’s not the standard set.”

The onstage community is formed by eight main characters: Mark, an aspiring documentary filmmaker and the show’s narrator; Roger, a struggling musician who is HIV positive and wants to write one last, great song before he dies; Tom Collins, a gay philosopher and teacher living with AIDS; Collins’ love interest, Angel, a street performer and drag queen who also has AIDS; Maureen, a bisexual performance artist who used to date Mark; Ivy-league educated lawyer Joanne, Maureen’s new girlfriend; club dancer/drug addict Mimi, who has AIDS and develops a flirtation with Roger; and Benny, their roommate-turned-landlord, now considered a sell-out by his friends. 

“That’s the essence of this whole show: dealing with these young people’s struggles in their part of the world,” Nowell says. “These people bond together and face what they’re facing together. That’s the message.”

Farmer says they’ve spent a lot of time talking about the issues the play addresses and sharing stories about people they know.

Even though the play takes place in New York, she says, “it’s not that far removed from Lynchburg.”

Those talks and the nature of the show have brought the cast together into a tightly knit group.

“This show makes you a community, and that’s how it has to be,” says Aaron Farr, who plays Roger. “When we come out in the beginning, it has to look like a community is getting ready to tell you a great story. Their story.

“It’s just impossible to do it and not be close. That’s the beauty of this show — anyone who does it is completely changed somehow.”

Making it their own
While “Rent” uses the format to address social issues, “Rocky Horror” is, on the surface, flat-out camp.

The show centers on Brad and Janet, a wholesome engaged couple who, after their car breaks down during a storm, find refuge in a nearby castle inhabited by a group of aliens. They’re led by Frank N. Furter, a bisexual mad scientist, or, as fans of the show know him, a “Sweet Transvestite from Transsexual Transylvania.”

The castle doubles as Frank’s laboratory, where he’s built a man named Rocky Horror.

There’s lots of sex, singing, dancing and naughtiness, says Randolph’s guest director Kathy Clay, who saw the show in London in the 1970s.

“I remember being in the audience, thinking, ‘This is the most bizarre theater experience.’”

Ken Parks, head of Randolph’s theater department, says there is a message underneath all that outrageousness, mostly about finding one’s identity and breaking away from roles that are imposed on us by others. 

“It’s all those rebellious things that younger generations are always involved in.”

“It’s a journey for Janet and Brad,” Parks adds. “They have a lot of certainties about their world at the top of the show, and go on a drive and run into something (completely different). They find themselves.”

The musical opened in London in 1973 and bounced from theater to theater before landing in the West End theater district — London’s answer to Broadway — in 1979. It also came to the U.S., where it hit Broadway in 1975, the same year that the film adaptation, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” was released.

The film is the epitome of a cult classic and is often the subject of midnight screenings, where audience members show up in costumes and quote lines during key moments.

Because of its popularity, everyone involved in Randolph’s production, which also opens Friday, worked hard to “add a new wrinkle to the show and make it their own,” Clay says. 

None so much as sophomore Jamey Hagy, who landed the role of Frank N. Furter, so iconically played in the movie by Tim Curry.

“He’s really made it his own, which is great,” Clay says. “He’s not imitating Tim Curry. He’s got his own sense of humor.”

And his own wardrobe.

Where Curry’s Frank donned a mostly black-and-white lingerie ensemble, Hagy and the costumers have added more in-your-face color, including a red bustier, leopard-print, ruffled underwear and, quite literally, the kicker: a pair of sky-high platform boots that make walking look like a feat unto itself.

Clay says Hagy also brought a sense of confidence and charisma to the role: “Both Jamey and Frank N. Furter are really comfortable in their own skin.”

Choreographer Hiawatha Johnson says he too tried to veer away from any preconceived notions cast members have about what the production should be.

“Our ‘Time Warp’ is different,” he says, referring to one of the show’s well-known song-and-dance numbers. “It’s another ‘Time Warp,’ and we’ve tried to do that with everything.”