Rent

It soon became apparent on opening night that Rent could never live up to the hype. It's sold as "a rock rewrite of La Boheme, in which tuberculosis has become HIV and Puccini's Paris has become New York's "Alphabet City", but there the parallels end. Though some of the tunes are cute, most notably Maureen (Rachel Turner) and Joanne (Jacqui Dubois) delivering the show's highlight, Take Me As I Am, and the ensemble tour-de- force, Seasons Of Love, overall Jonathan Larson's music is nondescript. And his lyrics, though left-of-field, occasionally witty and relatively anarchic, are largely forgettable. More like end-of-term music school compositions than Puccini or even Saturday Night Fever. This may even be the production's greatest failing given that the narrative is music-driven.

Larson does, of course, deserve credit for his mercilessly realistic depiction of the three key love affairs between homeless hetero, homo and lesbian couples, but the characters are poorly drawn and rarely engaging. Apart from Maureen and Joanne plus Mimi (perfectly realised by Allyson Brown) and Angel (likewise, by Thomas Goodridge), the Irish leads, Samuel Nicholl (Roger) and Sean Pol McGreevy (Mark) try hard but rarely rise to the demands of their parts, with McGreevy marginally more successful than the others.

As for the Hollywood "happy ending" type betrayal of La Boheme, well, I won't reveal the final scene of Rent. That said, the opening night performance still got a standing ovation, making one wonder if standing ovations mean anything these days.

Runs until August 9th. Booking: 01-6777744