20 February 2018
Ah RENT!
Great songs! Memorable characters!
A thoroughly loathsome premise!
[We] went out to see RENT the other night, and we had a simply wonderful time. No, we didn’t get into it with the other (likely leftie) theatre goers. We were all there just for the exuberance and the music and the joy.
Still, the “other side” must be heard…
So now I wonder, should I write this?
It is…RANDT ( –or– “Ayn Rand’s RENT” )
The valiant struggle of heroic property owners to capitalize their assets, stimulate the productive sector, and enrich all of humanity, in the face of fierce opposition by moochers, second-handers, the aesthete, and an authoritarian collective enforcing its corrupt notions of “renters’ rights.”
Plot: Ellsworth Mouch and Wesley Toohey are a progressive couple living in a rent controlled loft. She is an architectural critic writing for the New York Boast, and she is a social worker at the Dept of Family Services. They are five hundred twenty-seven thousand forty minutes (It’s a leap year!) arrears in their rent.
Building owners and business couple Howard Galt and Dominique Taggart want to evict the squatters and clear out the tent city in their adjacent lot so they can sell out to real estate brokers and business couple Frank Hedon and Dagny Francon, who intend to flip the property to GunCo, who plan on developing a manufactory and firing range.
Complications ensue when Dominique’s and Dagny’s old romance flairs up again while Ellsworth and Wesley struggle with the City to get the property declared a Homeless Sanctuary Organic Garden Child Care AIDS Clinic.
Featured numbers include:
“No A, but is A” — “Take Me or Make Me” — “La Vie Agore” —
“Today 4 I” — and — “The Tango Francon”