I've seen Rent on stage numerous times. I've had grace to see Rent on Broadway, off Broadway, in many small and large theaters, with both small and large budgets. I've watched the film version & prior TV presentation. Rent is, obviously, a favorite of mine. This 'Live' presentation has a cast with much proven talent. Some of the crew are familiar for their ace work. I had high hopes. This was such a disappointment & waste of amazing material & many fine efforts. It was hard to follow the staging, seemingly due to combination of jerky flow of sets to lack of cohesive direction of camera work. The quality of the choreography varied from professional to grammar school rehearsal. The greatest issue were the absurd cuts for commercial. That may be the root cause of why so much else, the staging, camera work, choreography, was choppy. Would seem possible Fox placed focus on commercials. Yes, with commercial TV one does expect breaks, but some rational scheduling of them should have been done. As it was, the flow of the music, dance and vocals was repeatedly lost. The powerful human emotion inherent in Rent kept on being broken time and again. A shame. For the performers and crew who did their all, I'd give a 8/10. For how Fox chose to mismanage and cheapen those efforts and, truly, disrespect Jonathan Larson's Rent, I'd give 2/10. A shame.
