Today is Friday 7th April 2017, and once more I’m back at the Millenium Centre in Cardiff Bay for another performance of Rent. A breathtaking, simply brilliant musical, that I can’t stop watching.  My last blog got to the end of act one. Today I will concentrate on the songs of act two.

As the second act begins, all the cast descend on stage for a superb version of another fabulous song from the show ‘Seasons of Love’, beautiful harmonies ring out before three great solo sections take over. Christina Modestou starts us off, Kevin Yates then takes over before Jenny O’Leary completes this wonderful song. I have to say these three have such amazing voices, with great appreciation from an adoring audience. Probably one of the loudest applause you will hear for any part of the show, and so well deserved. As the applause dies we move onto the first scene, as the gang try to get back into the padlocked building, with ‘Happy new year’, a quirky up beat song that gets all the main cast involved, with a few interesting costumes to go with it. 

The next scene moves a few months ahead, and another brilliant song takes shape, with Maureen and Joanne singing ‘Take me or leave me’, yet one more favourite to add to the collection, and sung wonderfully by both girls. As I’ve seen Lucie and Christina play Maureen along with Shanay and Jenny as Joanne, I have to say all four of them are just superb, and add so much to the flow of the song. After another short blast of ‘Seasons of love’, we have another beautiful song ‘Without You’ sung by Mimi (Philippa Stefani) and Roger (Ross Hunter), although during this song Angel is dying and as the scene moves on we see him comforted by Tom and the others, making this an extremely sad moment in the show, a few tears have started to flow during this scene.

As Angel lay dying the next scene ‘Contact’ goes really weird, with all the cast involved, this has to be seen as it’s a bit difficult to describe, but leads onto Angel’s death. After a short few words from Angel friends we move onto the reprise of ‘I’ll cover you’. Sung by Tom and the cast. This is when we discover the true brilliance of the voice of Ryan O’Gorman. With really beautiful harmonies surrounding the whole song, Ryan really belts out the main lyrics, and what a voice he has, it actually brings a tear to your eyes, just listening to his tremendous tones, as the song plays out.

The show moves onto ‘Halloween’, after Angel’ s funeral, Mark (Billy Callum) sings about what lead to this moment in time. Before changing yet again to another great song, ‘Goodbye Love’, where the friends argue in song, a well written and incredible piece of musical theatre, which puts the whole show into perspective. Also some fabulous voices from the cast, who never disappoint, no matter what is sung. 

As the show enters its final scenes, Mark and Roger duet to yet another magnificent song ‘What you own’, a really upbeat song to change the pace again. The finale changes again  after a fun section as Mark tries to show his work before the power goes. Tom enters and sings a honorarium to Angel (Santa Fe reprise), then Maureen enters with a dying Mimi before Roger sings his song to her ‘Your Eyes’ again a beautiful song, that also brings tears to my eyes.  As Mimi wakes the show comes to a close with the whole cast singing ‘No day but Today’, a magical ending to a magical show.

A word on tonight’s show, brilliant, yet again, the cast have been amazing all week, and still continue to shine every show.