Tonight I went and saw “Rent” at Konex, which is the same place that La Bomba de Tiempo is at. (Yeah, yeah, I know, I went and saw “Rent.” Shuddup.) (I went to that again on Monday, with Natanya, her brother, his wife, and her brother’s wife’s friend, Shawna.) The title is still “Rent,” even though everything was in Spanish.

It was pretty cool to watch. I’ll admit that ten minutes after it ended, everything repeated in my head was in English. It’s weird to see this show in Buenos Aires, though, where the theatre was just a theatre, and not, you know, Broadway. The acting was good (I really liked the guy who played Collins, and Mimi was pretty good, and I pretty much will always love Maureen), and the singing as well. But I mean — I guess it just felt like going to any theater production, aye? Not like going to see a Musical. And I kind of liked that.

Following Krista’s suggestion (was it hers?), I looked at the website, and followed the directions there about getting a discount: I went to the ticket office at 17:00 (actually, I got there at 17:20; I had to take a taxi to make it on-time because I showered first and lost track of the time), and wrote down my name and email and DNI, and then at 17:30 they had a “drawing” to give out the 16 free tickets they give out each night. Only, I mean, it was a drawing in name only, since there were five of us there, the other four in a party together. I got drawn first.

Which meant that, come 21:00, I sat in the middle of the front row with a $20 peso ticket (I’m not sure how much other tickets are), and the other folks sat on either side of me. This was mildly awkward, since it was a young woman, her (boy?)friend, and her parents, but it actually turned out to be fine; the woman sat next to me, and talked to me a bit. She’s a theater student here in Buenos Aire, but from Entre Rios (the city; how’s that spelled?), and she’s apparently going to Orlando in a few months to work at Disney (not sure what she’s doing). And she knew some of the folks in the performance, which was fun. We talked exclusively in Spanish, which was cool to be able to do, but slighly limiting.

In any case, “Rent” was a good time. It was essentially exactly the same as when I saw it in New York for probably 10 times as much, except the words were in Spanish. If I sung along in my head, which I [quasi-ashamedly] could do, the English words were still there, and the intonations were generally quite similar. But there were definitely points lost and words lost. I’m not complaining too much — there have got to be lost words in a translation of a musical, Jesus (speaking of whom, I got talked at by this woman at a bus stop on the way there, for like fifteen minutes, about the Bible, and she just babbled on in Spanish) — but I guess I’d say that it turned it from a musical with clever rhymes and clever syntax into a musical with just good music. That’s not entirely true, perhaps, but I think in general the meaning was retained without the simplicity, and sometimes it didn’t sound as good. (“Glory” drawn out sounds a lot better than “Gloria,” I promise you, and Mimi’s “And she looked good” in the final scene was gone, and a lot more like that.) And while perhaps we’re all limited by knowing the English version better, this woman and her parents agreed with me on this, and they spoke fluent Spanish. (We discussed it during the intermission; they had the movie & the CD of the English version at home, and apparently the father really likes it.)

I am convinced of these things:
(1) The guy who played Angel was good, but his dance scene was kind of lame, compared to past ones I’ve seen.
(2) Maureen’s monologue was good even in Spanish (although they repeated “saltar de fe” [leap of faith] more than “over the moon,” as in the English version), but I still think the best version I ever saw was Miriam’s, at TiP.
(3) “Without you” sounds a lot better than “Si no estas”.
(4) The “Contact” scene, when Angel dies, was holy shit way more scandalous here, with guys just in briefs humping women at the front of the stage. Maybe I’m wrong and was just closer to the stage.

Anyway, a fun time was had by all, and I am glad I went and saw that, and glad I got to sit in the front row. Even if I then had to eat leftovers at home because all the restaurants were closed by the time I got out at 00:30. (Leftovers weren’t bad. I took the rice from yesterday that I didn’t eat earlier today, and fried it with two eggs and some of the tofu. Which was, technically, silken tofu. I was silly and confused “pasta de soja” with tofu, and it does look the same from above, but, errr, maybe “pasta” means paste, but paste is not tofu. This is sort of like when I ordered “pan de pizza” thinking, hey, a pan pizza, and got just the baked pizza dough, with salt and oregano and nothing else. Which was actually delicious. Anyway.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about gerunds, in any case: I feel as though we use them a lot more in English than they do in other languages. I rarely hear someone saying “Yo estoy [haciendo algo]“, but in English “I’m [doing something]” is common parlance. And, when I think about it, a common mistake in people learning English is to say, “I go to this place,” when we would say, “I am going there.” I’m unsure about this — I don’t know if I’m wrong when I say, “Estoy trabajando en FLENI,” if I should be saying, “Trabajo en FLENI” (and is it “en,” or “a”), or if either is fine. In English, I could say, “I’m working at FLENI” or “I work at FLENI,” but sometimes I feel as though Spanish uses gerunds less, and would be more likely to interpret gerund-use as expressing immediacy.

And then I wonder whether maybe the case is just that I use gerunds more than the average bear in English as well, and that my confusion is based on being more self-aware of my language use. Anyway, weigh in, folks.