Rent: Live would have been utterly DOA without Vanessa Hudgens
Until she arrived.
Maureen appeared, in the body and blood of Vanessa Hudgens, and forcibly yanked this thing back to life. Â
You GUYS. When is she gonna get some respect? Why is she still an eyeroll? Don’t tell me it’s because of High School Musical, or did you not hear what Zac Efron’s up to lately? Hudgens performs her f-cking face off (just like she did in Grease! Live), yet somehow there’s still skepticism around her?
She’s once again giving it everything she’s got, even in ‘dress’ – her sections had unrehearsed elation that made you keep second-guessing whether we were still in the pre-tape section – and I say this as someone who has been exhausted by Maureen and her cow goings-on in the past.
Okay, she’s not Idina Menzel. Guess what? NOBODY IS. But Hudgens knocked this role out, making Maureen her own, and this show would have been utterly DOA without her.
Related: Because Hudgens was SO fantastic, all the headlines today will be about her, and less time will be spent on how solidly awesome Kiersey Clemons was as Joanne. It’s not as showy a role, and I saw some people complaining about some of the songs changed for her register, but she matches Hudgens’ energy every time and they seem completely evenly matched, and given that we’ve just established that Hudgens is a BEAST, that’s not nothing.
In short, this was an unfortunate series of events, and they probably should have pulled the cord on an understudy earlier. But I LOVE a rock in a crisis, and Vanessa Hudgens just threw down a challenge – who can create a role worthy of her? Because people who overlooked her are going to be kicking themselves, pretty much now.
