Rent: A-

It was panned by critics; and it was a tepid box office hit, at best. Yet when Rent came out in 2005, brought from the stage to the screen by director Chris Columbus and with a script by The Perks of Being a Wallflower's Stephen Chbosky, I fell in love. Hard. I melted at the cascading melody of "Seasons of Love." I leapt at the brassy defiance of "Take Me Or Leave Me." And "La Vie Boheme"? There are not words. Yet, three years later - with the DVD and soundtrack collection on endless roatation in both my head, stereo, and television - I'd never seen the original. I adored Jonathan Larson's music, and was in ever increasing rapt fixation with Columbus' film, but I had yet to sit myself down in a theatre seat and experience Rent: The Musical.

No longer. Last night, a mere four rows from the stage, I watched the original, the two hour-ish rock opera, in all its big, messy, brilliant glory. And as much as I was floored by my first experience with "Another Day," or "Out Tonight," I was equally astounded here - albeit in a curiously different manner.

As a film, Rent turned musical expression into a form of musical protest: each duet was really a layered, soaring argument of the sexes, the heart, and the mind - with the cast alternately fighting each other, The System, themselves. It leapt from the opening aria of the aforementioned "Love," straight into the gritty urban protest of "Rent," and then on to the sexy on-again/off-again dating/break-up duets of "Light My Candle" and "Tango: Maureen," and then finally ending the first act with another protest - "Over the Moon" - only to end right back where it started, with "Seasons of Love."

As a musical production, however, Rent is nowhere near as sophisticated, as (odd as it seems) cohesively linear. Its a rock opera, and it ably takes up that genre's tendency for complex compositions to another level. And as an energetic production, I doubt it has an equal. But an irritating side-note of these two attributes is that for the majority of the first act, and some of the second, the individual numbers get a little lost in the chaos. To wit, of all the major numbers in the first hour and a half, only "Tango: Maureen," "Over the Moon," and "One Song Glory" really pop. Everything else (like, sadly, "Out Tonight," or "Rent") merely registers as more great, almost generic, music in a night filled with the stuff.

Yet take heart. Because the nearly goofy vibe that permeates this production, orchaestrated undoubtably by director Michael Greif, gives way to the tragedy and poignancy that resonates through Rent's second act, and more of those songs connect (most notably "Goodbye Love"). Columbus did a wise re-structuring in his film version, and the music that he did cut away shows up as dialogue in Chbosky's script. (This is a clever move, and it can work, but in turning the "Voice Mail" numbers into spoken word, something inevitably is lost...namely, Alexi Darling.) It is such that, there is more individual connection on screen than on stage. But why then did I come away feeling that the original opera is better than the film musical? The answer lies in a crucial performance currency that Rent possesses in spades (ironic, considering the characters are so poor, plagued by the titular bill): that is, a rambling and propulsive zest.

For example, a chunk of the show's score is in about a dozen group or chorus numbers ("Christmas Bells," "We're Okay") that lack much narrative-driven purpose. But they work anyway. In fact, and as previously hinted, some of them work very well indeed ("Voice Mail 1-5"). Why? Because the night's cast, including two Idol alums (Anwar Robinson as Tom Collins and Heinz Winckler as Roger), is so utterly dedicated to the power of their work. They make the unruly sprawl of their fictionalized lives a joyeous entertainment. More than that, Rent does improve over its film adaptation. Most notably, the documentarian conceit that Mark (Jed Resnick) represents actually works on the stage, his character frequently breaking the fourth wall as a meta-narrator.

Listening as I am now to the film soundtrack, its easy to acquiesce to the idea that the movie is a cleaner and more powerful version. Yet such a notion denies those who think it the opportunity to indulge in the opera; and doing that would be a crucially tragic mistake. Because as Rent: The Musical closes, its principal characters all gathered for the closing "Finale," not only have they enraptured the audience, they've filled them with happiness. With ecstasy.