Rent

The Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Rent has an admirable history. Based on Puccini’s opera, La Boheme, the off-Broadway production subverted the essentially conservative nature of the medium, injecting drugs, sex and bohemian excess into a familiar set-up. A lengthy Broadway run, critical acclaim and a film quickly followed. Few were immune to its charms, in spite of its dark and moving subject matter: the AIDS epidemic of 1980s New York.

With every popular musical inevitably come amateur productions, and 2009 sees the Edinburgh University Savoy Opera Group attempt to grapple with the material. And grapple they do. The amateur cast—and I use that word in the most respectfully literal context—undoubtedly give the show their all. Sadly, the profoundly uneven singing, acting and, most painfully, dancing ability lets the show down. This would be forgivable had it not been for the slightly-above-average ticket price.

By all means, amateur theatre is a wonderful institution for talent scouts and proud parents, but for a demanding Fringe audience, this production simply does not satisfy. The actors playing Collins, Angel and Roger stand head and shoulders above their colleagues, and clearly have bright futures ahead of them, but when basic voice projection issues render entire songs almost incomprehensible, there is a critical problem. Even taking the production’s low-budget credentials into account, it is difficult to overlook the presence of actors onstage who, put simply, have no right to be there.

In its Broadway incarnation, Rent absolutely deserves its bucketloads of critical acclaim. Regrettably, this student endeavour does not.