Adam Pascal & Anthony Rapp Live Performance – 10.27.18

First of all, there are two key things you should know here.  1)  RENT was one of the first musicals I ever loved.  The cast recording blew my mind when I first heard it, and a lot of my early exploration of musical theatre used RENT as a jumping-off point – I followed original cast members to other cast recordings and discovered new actors/composers, I followed Jonathan Larson to tick, tick… BOOM! and discovered Raúl Esparza, etc.  However, 2) I’ve never seen a live production of RENT.  I was probably 15 or 16 when I first got into it and desperately wanted to see a tour of it, but it was deemed too “adult” by my parents.  And by the time I was older and more able to make those decisions for myself, things just got in the way:  the national tours wound down, the original Broadway production closed, and other shows started vying for my attention.

All of which is to say that the opportunity to see two members of the OBC in concert together taps into a very particular, very special type of awesomeness in my life.  Even though my Broadway tastes have exploded outward in all directions since my RENT days, there was still something utterly astounding about seeing Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp onstage in front of me.

They began with two largely-separate acoustic sets, Pascal taking the stage first.  Accompanying himself on the guitar, he performed a mixture of mostly rock (some of which was his own material) and a few Broadway numbers.  I’ll cop to not being as familiar with most of the songs in his set, but his voice is still to die for, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  I especially loved the two Broadway songs he performed – not just because both were songs I know well, but because of what he did with them.  The first was a lovely rendition of Sweeney Todd’s “Johanna,” slipped surprisingly into the middle of “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” by Jeff Buckley (it was so unexpected that Pascal had to ask someone in the front row, “Why are you laughing?” after the initial, “Wait – is that ‘Johanna’?” reaction that followed the first line.)  And later, after a story about how much it meant to him to be a part of Cabaret, he sang “Maybe This Time.”  What I loved about these songs was that he performed both in ways I’ve never heard them performed before.  They were true covers with his own take on them:  a light rock flavor with slightly-altered rhythms to fit the style, both sounding fantastic in his voice.  Overall, he did less talking than Rapp, but whenever he did, it counted – I loved Pascal’s story about how people would get the two of them mixed up when they were in RENT.

For the assembled audience, Anthony Rapp had the more notably-crowd-pleasing set.  With a few exceptions – R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” (Rapp’s audition song for RENT) and “Everybody Hurts” (dedicated to the people of Pittsburgh) – it was all Broadway stuff, a varied collection that included a bunch of favorites.  Some were from shows he’s been in, like “Origin of Love” from Hedwig and “Happiness” from You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, while others were from shows he loves but knows he’ll probably never be in, like “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” from Jersey Boys and “Falling Slowly” from Once.  Each number was accompanied by a personal story or a reason why Rapp chose it; he paid special attention to composers who’d followed in Jonathan Larson’s footsteps and changed the face of Broadway, and I loved the time he took to paint a mental image of himself in Hedwig for us (5-inch heels!!)  He pointed out, self-deprecatingly, that he didn’t have Pascal’s instrumental talent and was accompanied by one of the musicians from RENT’s original pit band, playing both piano and guitar and, for reasons unknown, sharing a guitar strap with Pascal – they literally had to pause the show a few times to swap the strap between guitars.

Rapp’s set also eased us into the RENT portion of the night.  He sang a gorgeous rendition of “Without You” (which he’d sung at his mother’s memorial service back when he was still in RENT,) along with the general “No Day But Today” theme, before bringing Pascal back out for “What You Own.”  Then, Pascal performed “One Song Glory,” and the two of them closed the show with “Seasons of Love.”  And okay, I know I’m just kind of listing the songs here, but that’s because I don’t know how to describe how amazing this was.  It was just me dying happy over and over again – as in, “Then they did ‘What You Own’ and I died… then Adam Pascal did ‘One Song Glory’ and I died…  How am I even here right now?!?”  So, so, so unbelievably cool.

Obviously, they knew that these were the songs everyone was waiting to hear, but I appreciate that they really gave them their due.  Both were gracious with their time and attention during these performances, and there was no sense of them phoning it in or getting the songs over with.  While both of them have gone onto varied careers, they’re still very much defined by their involvement in RENT, and they seemed to recognize and respect that.  Even if that was the 1000^th time they sang “What You Own” together, they gave everyone in the audience a specific, powerful performance to remember.  I’m really grateful to them for that.