Fox presents "Rent" (not quite live) (1 Viewer)

[mattCR]

Fox had planned a live presentation of the musical "Rent" tonight, but as a main castmember broke an ankle during the dress rehearsal last night, they are instead airing a combination which will be mostly the recording of the dress rehearsal.

https://ew.com/tv/2019/01/27/rent-live-brennin-hunt-broken-ankle/

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Hugely disappointing. Not only does it lose the thrill of watching something live, but a dress rehearsal just doesn't have the same energy.

No excuse not to have understudies for something like this.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Apparently the cast is performing a concert version live tonight while FOX is broadcasting the dress rehearsal, to keep the energy up for the live audience.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Wow.

It's not live in my timezone anyway, so I have it recording so that I can watch later and skip the commercials. But...yeah, the whole point of these "live" musicals is for it to be "live" at least for audiences in EST.

Had this been a Broadway show, there of course would have been an understudy available. I wonder if the lack of one will impact how they plan future live events.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Vanessa Hudgens is killing it as Maureen, though.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Vanessa Hudgens is killing it as Maureen, though.

Slightly O/T but...based on her success in this, how long do you think until Warner Bros. pulls the trigger on her In the Heights casting? They've got to be thinking in that direction anyway.

 

[TJPC]

I am recording this to watch later, but caught the number “Living In America At The End Of The Millenium”.

Was the audience allowed to scream and jump up and down during the entire show?
This really spoiled this number. The lyrics were almost inaudible. I thought it was supposed to be a broadway performance, not a male strip show.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Was the audience allowed to scream and jump up and down during the entire show?

Yes. It felt at times more like a sitcom than a musical production.

I thought it was supposed to be a broadway performance, not a male strip show.

This show has always had a certain amount of audience participation, particularly during the protest scene, but these audiences were completely different than a Broadway audience. They treated it more like a rock concert.

 

[Malcolm R]

Yes, I tried to watch some of it a couple times and the live audience completely ruined it with all their whooping, screeching, and applause during the scenes/songs. I changed the channel.

 

[mattCR]

I think they let the audience do whatever because it wasn't the real version.. until it was ;(

 

[Jake Lipson]

At least we already have a great taping of this show, from 2008, when they recorded the Broadway production with the final cast on its closing. That Blu-ray is terrific, and it's still there regardless of the merits of this presentation.

 

[Matt Hough]

Rent-heads are an infamous phenomenon. I am Rent-ed out having seen the Broadway production, the film, and numerous local interpretations because friends were in them. No more Rent for me. I feel the same about Fiddler on the Roof, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I will never willingly watch any new production of these plays ever again.

 

[TJPC]

Rent-heads are an infamous phenomenon. I am Rent-ed out having seen the Broadway production, the film, and numerous local interpretations because friends were in them. No more Rent for me. I feel the same about Fiddler on the Roof, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I will never willingly watch any new production of these plays ever again.

I agree! They fall into my “Gun to the head” category!

 

[PMF]

[...] a main castmember broke an ankle during the dress rehearsal last night[...]

https://ew.com/tv/2019/01/27/rent-live-brennin-hunt-broken-ankle/

So, if he performs with the broken ankle then that means we'd be seeing the original "cast", right?
Title Change: "Rent on a Hot Tin Roof"

 

[Greg.K]

Rent-heads are an infamous phenomenon. I am Rent-ed out having seen the Broadway production, the film, and numerous local interpretations because friends were in them. No more Rent for me. I feel the same about Fiddler on the Roof, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I will never willingly watch any new production of these plays ever again.

I agree! They fall into my “Gun to the head” category!

And does anyone really ever need to see another production of Grease or The Music Man?

 

[JQuintana]

No. Sounds like this was a real dog.

They also butchered my Christmas fav A Christmas Story.

Enough with these "live" plays on TV.

 

[TJPC]

There are hundreds and hundreds of interesting broadway shows that I would love to see staged. Instead we get the same 10 warhorses over and over.

For these TV ones they must have these characteristics:

1) Did it run in multiple productions over and over again for the last 20 or 30 years?

2) Did your local highschool do it every five years?

3) Did a movie get made of it that has played in your city and on network TV multiple times?

4) Have you heard the music so many times that the first 3 notes of each song make you hurl?

If you can answer yes to these 4 questions then I bet it’s on TV next year.

 

[PMF]

And does anyone really ever need to see another production of Grease or The Music Man?

No, but I wouldn't mind seeing a matching 4K of The Music Man to compliment the 4K of Grease.

 

[Charles Smith]

I'm not passing judgment, yea or nay, on the piece itself, because we all have our tastes in musicals. But I witnessed some mindboggling technical issues that I'm very curious about. There were seemingly huge broadcasting problems on Fox's end, including both before and after the show, which I haven't seen addressed anywhere, so maybe someone can shed some light on it.

Shortly after setting my DVR at around 6:30 pm to record the show at 8:00, I was flipping a few channels and happened to come back to the Fox channel, only to find a quiet steady high pitched tone accompanying a display that looked like this (but without all the info, just the "test pattern" and the time readout):

I snapped this picture after the show, but prior to the show, both of Fox's channels in the NYC area (as accessed via Comcast / Xfinity cable -- channel 1005 for HD, 5 for SD), were displaying this image for nearly an hour. It changed back to regular broadcasting maybe half an hour before the show, but whatever program was on lacked proper audio. No dialogue could be heard, just background music. And then it went out again, maybe ten minutes before "RENT" was to start. There was again no broadcasting from Fox until literally about a minute before 8:00 pm when the musical began.

Shortly into the show, I noticed that I only had audio in my center channel and a little bit in the left and right speakers. There was literally nothing going to the surrounds, which isn't at all typical for specials like this. Checked the receiver settings, but didn't attempt to troubleshoot any further as I was only intending to have the show on in the background and I'd watch the DVR capture some other time.

Immediately following the show, my screen went black for a moment and then this display reappeared, this time with the info shown above. I can vouch for it being there for at least those 24 minutes past 11:00 pm; I have no idea when they returned to regular broadcasting.

But wait, there's more! The musical had questionable balances between singers, band, etc., which may or may not have been a function of my receiving only the front channels. But during commercial breaks, sometimes a particular commercial would play normally, other times one would play without any voice being heard -- there would be either silence, or music, and occasionally it even sounded like the music didn't match the commercial, as though Fox was shooting canned music out there to help cover the problem. (That could just be a bad guess on my part.)

Additionally, once the commercials ran their course (silently or not) at each break, there followed a sort of generic "Fox" display, in total silence, lasting precisely two minutes (I timed one of the later ones at 2 1/2 minutes). When this faded out, the musical seemed to restart where it should -- i.e., it didn't look like it was already in progress. This 2+ minutes of silence occurred at the end of every commercial break over the course of the three hours. Someone posted this shot on Facebook:

Maybe someone has reported on all of this by now. Last night I only saw a comment by someone on another cable system mentioning the outage before the program. It was a mystery to me how all of this could have gone un-remarked upon by so many viewers.

 

[TJPC]

I had read about the cast making an announcement that the show was taped and the lead had broken his ankle. This occurred at the start of the second commercial break.

In Canada, 2 seconds into this announcement it was cut off and replaced by a commercial. The transition to commercials at each break was particularly abrupt and inept