Bohemian Rhapsody
BY STARSHINE ROSHELL
Published: 4/12/02
JOAN MARCUS
The cast of "Rent," with Kevin Spencer as Roger.
Kevin Spencer never got to meet Jonathan Larson.
The creator of the wildly popular musical, "Rent," Larson died unexpectedly of a broken heart vessel at age 35, hours before the show's first performance.
Spencer, who stars in the current "Rent" tour, has met with Larson's father at New York's Life Cafe, where the playwrite penned much of the rock opera. He's even taken a peek into the nearby apartment where Larson lived - and died.
But sometimes he feels the need to actually talk to Larson. And so he does.
"I don't care if people think I'm crazy," he said. "I have conversations with Jonathan. I say, 'I'm having a tough day today, Jonathan. I need you. Can you help me tell this story?'"
The bittersweet story of "Rent," which won both a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize in 1996, is loosely based on Puccini's "La Boheme."
Instead of poets, painters and seamstresses living in Paris' Latin Quarter in the 1830s, you get a group of young artists squatting in New York's East Village at the end of the 20th century, relying on each other as they struggle to pay the rent, kick drug addiction, overcome disease and somehow leave their mark on the world.
The tour, featuring the original Broadway director and choreographer, comes to the Arlington Theatre on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Spencer, 28, plays passionate and tortured songwriter Roger, a lost soul who dreamed of rock stardom before his girlfriend committed suicide and he learned he had HIV.
Like other Rogers before him, including the role's originator Adam Pascal, Spencer is not actually an actor.
"I'm a rock musician," he said during a recent phone interview from a tour stop in Oklahoma City.
A guitarist, bassist, vocalist and drummer from Ontario, Canada, Spencer has been performing, touring and recording for years with Canadian indie bands Rhymes With Orange, Mudgirl and Mezzanine. Friends convinced him to try out for the show, and his rock 'n' roll background won him the role.
"I think they really wanted to cast someone who had a little bit of that lifestyle behind them," he said. "I've been through a lot of the things Roger's been through. I've had friends that have been addicted to heroin, that have died of HIV."
His gruff voice and the fact that he was used to belting tunes to the back of an arena didn't hurt either.
"It's a huge vocal role, and it's known for blowing voices," he said. "If the person doesn't have the experience of singing like that on a regular basis, it's going to hurt them."
Spencer hasn't had trouble with the singing, or even the raucous, kinetic dance numbers. It's the acting that tripped him up.
A paperwork fiasco with the immigration office forced him to miss the first two weeks of a five-week rehearsal period before the tour launched in October. Then he grappled with his character's brooding personality, which is very different from his own.
"What hasn't come easy is the fact that I'm not a highly aggressive person, and I'm not confrontational," he said. "I like to sit down and talk things out, and that's not Roger. He can be calm and together and someone will say the wrong thing and he snaps into another personality. It took me at least, honestly, a month on the tour before I was comfortable with that."
Once he finally got inside Roger's head, he had trouble getting back out. "Not having the acting background, I had a hard time coming out of character sometimes," he said. "I was left with some residuals of Roger. It was very tough, very lonely. I'd come back to my hotel room and just daydream about the show."
Indeed, "Rent" offers a lot to think about. The name itself is a symbol of what motivates today's young adults, a metaphor for the impermanence in their lives and a statement that home is where you make it.
Larson, who often had trouble paying his own rent, created a fictional family of sorts from the motley but scrappy characters in his play. There's Rockin' Roger and Mimi, the 19-year-old junkie and exotic dancer who renews his faith in life. There's the nerdy filmmaker, his performance artist ex-girlfriend and her new lesbian paramour. There's the philosophy teacher and his drag queen lover. And no Gen-X genealogy would be complete without the sell-out, yuppie landlord.
The unconventional relationships and gritty, bohemian perspective make for fun on-stage antics, but also have been known to make some audience members squirm.
"There are some people who remove themselves from their seats after the first act," Spencer said, but those folks are missing out on the show's surprisingly sentimental and ultimately redeeming message. "It's a simple one, and it's universal: Measure your life in love. That's the most important message of 'Rent.'"
But it's the electric, anthemic music - packed tight with blazing guitars, riveting melodies and irreverent lyrics - that rocks Spencer's world.
"It's like no other musical that's ever been written before," he said. "Nobody's ever taken the world of The Who and Elvis Costello and Billy Joel and rolled it all into one."
The performer gets chills nightly during the powerful "Another Day" and the gospel-tinged "Seasons of Love," but as a musician, the tune that moves him most is the sweet, stirring "One Song Glory," in which Roger lays bare his desperate desire to write one great song before he dies.
"It just hits home with me," he said. "Everybody wants to leave a great statement on this Earth, some type of mark on the planet before they leave." It's during that number, alone on stage with his guitar, that Spencer feels the strongest connection to the late Larson.
"I sit on the table and I sing 'Glory' and I picture Jonathan sitting there," he said. "He did write one great song. 'Rent' is the song."