Rent: Live betrayed the ethos of theater and its “the show must go on" motto

The Washington Post

The decision to mostly air a pretaped rehearsal in response to Brennin Hunt's injury made Rent: Live much worse, says Drew Goins. "The trend with these telecasts has been to hew closer to the actual theatrical experience. Early entrants into the genre such as The Sound of Music and Peter Pan, filmed on NBC soundstages, were deadened by the lack of a live audience," says Goins. "Fox’s production of Grease and then NBC’s Jesus Christ Superstar put bodies in the house. There was new sound mixing to work out and dickering over the optimal amount of woo-hooing, but the whole thing suddenly felt much more vibrant. It felt like theater. So it was that much more jarring when the Rent producers bucked the trend to make such an untheatrical decision. So much of the excitement of live theater comes from encountering the art form’s real-time hurdles. That doesn’t just mean waiting for unexpected things to go wrong, but for unexpected things to go right, too. We root for the recovery just as much as the wobble."