RENT: The Blog (5/3/24)

March 2nd. 6 PM. Australian Eastern Standard Time.

Yet, from here on in, I’m still without a script.

See if anything’ll come of it… (instead of my old shit)

—

So I saw RENT. Pretty fun.

I’ve never been to see musicals or plays at all besides for school. I certainly haven’t gone into the city for an event like this since I was much younger, if at all. Easter Monday last year does not count, there was no good music (for all purposes, the Geelong song does suck ass) and thus is not counted. RENT, however, definitely had good music. Very quotable music. Very relatable music.

But for some background.

My friend, who will not be named for privacy reasons (I don’t like to splurge too much) was celebrating her birthday. She invited me and a couple other of her close friends to see RENT, which had just dropped in Melbourne (I will splurge that much.) and was, well. A musical. My friend loves musicals. Big fan of the classics, but she also quite likes the modern ones too. Yes, she saw Hamilton when it came to Australia. No, I did not. Still regretting it, now I’ve seen this. Anyways. There were five of us and her parents who drove us into the city that Saturday afternoon after netball. My feet still hurt, but hey, I love driving into Melbourne. Freeways are fun. Traffic is also fun if there isn’t a deadline. Lucky for us, there wasn’t. We checked into the place we were staying for the night before my friend’s parents said we could go by ourselves to get dinner. Everyone wanted sushi, and I knew there was a sushi place nearby. You know your way around Southbank after you walk up and down it multiple times in one month. After sushi, we went across the river to the Dangerfield across from Flinders Street to shop around. (I am deciding not to make the obvious joke here.)

On the way back, however, some of us noticed a stall outside Flinders Street Station with a sign reading ‘free books’. Most of us being avid readers, we walked over.

Yeah, surprise, they were all religious books.

No complaints, but I was kinda hoping for some literary classics that weren’t otherwise trying to convince my brain of higher powers. And I already have a bible. One of our friends took a small booklet (probably as a joke) that I later flipped through and found a lot of nature photos in. So. Y’know. Not too bad. Found some great bird photos. But there’s a reason I do Ministry, and it is notto deceive.

We got back to the apartment/hotel/place about an hour and a half before the show was to start. Aptly, we spent a lot of the time getting ready. I’m not one for makeup and I’d already come dressed in my ‘nice’ things, so I mostly spent the time playing my pizza game on my phone while joining in the others’ conversations. And eating chips. Can’t forget the chips.

Eventually, we set off to the Arts Centre. If you’ve been to Melbourne and you haven’t seen it, you’re probably lying because it’s the one that looks like the Eiffel Tower. Kinda. It’s the tall one. I think they call it the Spire. Eiffel Tower. Eh, same thing. It was getting cold, so I brought my jacket. My friend’s parents left us outside the Arts Centre (they hadn’t got tickets for themselves) and we were left to find our seats and things by ourselves. I won’t talk about how long that took and the fact we took the wrong escalator down and that they didn’t take cash for a program so my friend had to buy one for me and they cost like 10 dollars and whatever BUT WE MADE IT with like a minute before the show started lol

I’m just gonna skim over the plot of the musical because I can’t be stuffed but basically

I wrote some earlier notes about what I wanted to talk about so we’ll use those as a scaffold;

Hate that this is the first thing I write. He was pretty, is all. He also played the role of Mark reeeeally well. I got the sense that Mark was a different character to the rest (ie. not in a relationship at the time, not suffering from HIV/AIDS) but I was especially drawn to his passion for media and film. Documentary-type things, filming the struggles around him. It represents the role he plays really well on a theatrical sense, as well- being there, but not being a major player. He’s important, but he’s not the one struggling the most. I love that. And the actor was pretty. Etc.

I mentioned Hamilton once. Done.

I’m gonna take this to talk about all my individual favourite parts of the musical, or things that otherwise stuck out in a cool way

Yeah. Pretty good stuff.

My friend’s parents were waiting for us when the musical ended and we walked back all together. By now it was really cold. I realised I’d forgotten to pack pyjamas when we got in the lift, but luckily one of my friends brought spares (in case of different weather) so everything was okay lolol. From memory, some of us stayed up until 3 in the morning, but I was knackered after netball and all the walking so I reportedly fell asleep at half past 12. Yay me.

Next morning; we wake up intermittently between 8 and 10AM, we get ready, out the door by 11AM, and released into the Big City to do whatever. We just went to Melbourne Central and went shopping, got lunch, stopped at another Dangerfield, went to a boba place, went to BIGW and my friend bought some books, I found some AFL keyrings in a Smiggle that because they were in a Smiggle smelt really bad, before we had to go back home.

Overall 10/10. Would recommend.

Carn.