Tom Jackson Greaves

The really fascinating part of Bailey's track though is that they also portray the neighborhood drug dealer who has some dealings with Mimi and who, in the film adaptation of Rent at least, It is implied that was the drug dealer of Roger and also of April.

In any case, really interesting to have Bailey perform both sides of this addiction story and does so with a lot of movement language, choreographed as is the production by Tom Jackson Greaves.

with movement and dance that is pursuant to the frantic pulse of the score, but also motivated by a sense of a human heart pulse that is almost so big that it sends shockwaves throughout the rest of the body.

Our first choreographic moment occurs as the cast is still seated.

But there are also new ideas as well, such as in Contact in the second act, one of perhaps the more controversial numbers among the show's fans, which did not make it into the film adaptation.

It reconciles these sort of disparate individual anecdotes about sexual encounters with a downturn in the health of one of the characters in the show, evoking actual medical fever alongside sweaty passion, somewhat in conversation with the AIDS epidemic.

And this number, with these red neon lights lowering down onto the stage, one of the more overt showcases of Howard Hudson's consistently great dynamic and explosive lighting design, has done the impossible and actually made me really enjoy Contact, in part because of Jeevan Braitch's performance, but also because of the assertive intimacy in the partner work here from Tom Jackson Greaves, who introduces the number with these grasping same-sex encounters between members of the ensemble.

Another huge part of the visual identity of this production is its video design, and I know that is a concept that a lot of people have become rightfully fatigued by on stage.