Rent

Here he is, Mr. Heinz Winckler as Roger in Rent, which played tonight at the Sony Centre.
According to the tour website their next stop is a date in London, ON and 2 days in Kitchener. Wherever that is. I was hoping they were going to Ottawa so I could see the show again there. How long will it take me to learn, nothing happens in Ottawa after dark!

Well the cast was really young. Heinz is 9 months older than me and I think everyone else was younger. A big difference from the Broadway cast I saw in September, Anthony Rapp just turned 36. It was almost like the High School version but it worked in almost every way.

The two exceptions were Mark played by Jed Resnick and Maureen played by Christine Dwyer. Jed is quite obviously gay and played the role a bit too campy. Anthony Rapp who made the role famous is also gay but didn't look like an 18 year old twink mincing around the bathhouse. Christine was better as Maureen but every other cast I've seen Maureen is a heavy set girl, Christine is more tall than heavy and has a strange lisp when she goes into her lower register.

The crowd was very young, I saw a high school bus parked outside, and as I'm surrounded by a group of 15 year old boys who all know the words to the songs, I'm thinking - Are they all gay? They didn't seem to be. What group of straight boys at 15 goes out to a musical in $100 seats?

The theatre was HUGE holding 3,500 people and packed full. I couldn't even see the last row of the balcony so I'm very glad I was on the floor. I was about 10th row and I still wished I was closer.

Heinz Winckler was fantastic as Roger. I've never really cared for this role, as played by Adam Pascal on Broadway it was always kind of a rebel guy with long hair and a leather jacket being sullen but Heinz brought something new and I enjoyed the role for I believe the first time. The whole cast had a dynamic energy, looked like they really enjoyed being there and that made it great, plus the subtle changes only someone who'd seen the show 6 times would notice were good too.

Last note, the role of Angel the drag queen is always played by a man and I and the 15 year old boys were disappointed when the program said the role would be played by Kristen-Alexzander Griffith. Turns out no one has any idea what this person is gender wise. Tranny? She/he has a website but its down.
Oh, and no Anwar Robinson, despite what the papers said. No big loss.
Oh, and I sat beside a 11 year old boy who ate 3 shrimp rolls and looked like he wanted to play Nintendo. These tickets cost $100, what are people doing?

Also I created a pretty cool looking "about me" page for the archives on ebay. Check it out. Another Gay Archive in Florida is also listing their stuff too, check out one of their listings here (yes I bought it...) They have a different philosophy, they sell 95% of their stuff for .99$ or buy it now for $1.99. I guess they're trying to make it up in volume? I'm still holding out for the big bucks. I love it when you list something and it explodes, gets way more than you thought. This last round a 14 page PFLAG pamphlet got $15 and a book called Unzipped, which I saw for $5 on another site got $20. Nice!