Wednesday 5th April 2017, and another day back in Cardiff Bay, at the Millenium Centre for my 3rd performance of the brilliant musical  ‘Rent’. The last few blogs I’ve talked mainly about the cast, revealing just how brilliant they all are, in making this show the spectacle it is. Tonight’s show has Shanay Holmes as Joanne, so far I’ve heard Jenny in the role, who has been amazing. Although I must say Shanay was incredible too. Every person can play multiple parts and never let anyone down. Also Lucie Jones was back as Maureen, with both her and Christina Amazingly fabulous in the role.

Today I thought I’d move on to the songs I love in this show. There is so much good music to talk about I’ll probably need a few blogs to complete this particular mission, so here goes.

At the start we meet Mark and Roger who lead us into the first song, which just happens to be called ‘Rent’, an in your face tune that gets all the cast involved and starts the fun off at a frenetic pace. Then onto a shorter piece as we meet Tom and Angel for ‘You ok honey’.  The scene moves back to Roger with a really fantastic piece of music in ‘One song glory’ which is sung brilliantly by Ross Hunter. As he finishes we move nicely into another superb song, meeting Mimi at the same time. The amazing music carries on with ‘Light my Candle’ a duet with Mimi and Roger, again sung to perfection by Philippa Stefani and Ross Hunter. Only four songs in and its already off the scale as far as the music goes.

As Tom Collins meets up with his mates Mark and Roger, a magical scene ensues as Angel ( the brilliant Layton Williams) enters in drag for an unforgettable song and dance routine ‘Today 4 U’. Enter Benny (Javar LaTrail Parker) to the fray as the group move onto ‘You’ll See’.  The show moves very swiftly on to another fabulous scene with Joanne, (Shanay Holmes) and Mark (Billy Cullum) with ‘Tango Maureen’. Yet another brilliant performance, with some amazing vocal talent on show.

We next meet a few of the ensemble as Mark, Angel and Tom head towards a ‘Life Support’ meeting, where we hear a snippet of ‘ No day but today’. The music changes to become heavier with Mimi (Philippa Stefani) singing ‘Out Tonight’, to Roger, another fabulous song. As that ends Roger then continues in the same scene with ‘Another Day’, a duet with Mimi. Would you believe it yet another fantastic song, brilliantly sung, as has been the case  so far on every song I’ve heard.

The singing has once again been absolutely amazing, and listening to it live on stage has been so much better than a CD or DVD. I think I will leave it there for today, I will continue with the rest of act one on my next visit, as there is still loads to talk about, before we even get to the interval.