Steppin' Out at 54 Below: ADAM PASCAL
I went to see Adam Pascal recently at 54 Below. I hadn’t seen him live in a long time — not so far back as the original production of Rent, but pre-pandemic, at a Marfan Foundation benefit, as I remember, that boasted a reunion performance by much of the original Rent cast; Marfan being the genetic connective-tissue syndrome that Jonathan Larson never knew he had, but which contributed to the aortic aneurysm that killed him.
The sound of Pascal’s stentorian, ripped, rock star voice at 54 Below heaved me back instantaneously to 1995 and the ringing of the phone in my office early afternoons, with Jonathan’s voice on the other end.
“Listen to this,” he would bark, with no preliminary, and there would be Daphne Rubin-Vega or Anthony Rapp, or Jesse Martin, or Adam Pascal — none of whom I yet knew, though I would soon meet them fleetingly at Jonathan’s “Peasant Feast” in his Greenwich Street apartment, come the holidays.
Jonathan’s joy at the sound of his music in their throats was so intense it just needed to be shared; his newly-rehearsing Rent cast down at New York Theatre Workshop. All those powerhouse voices resounding for a guy who had spent much of the previous seven years singing Rent to himself on home-made recordings, or to his friends, on their answering machines.
“Isn’t it amazing?”
It was. Even over the phone. Especially when they all were singing, as an ensemble. I’ll never forget how great they sounded, and how happy it made Jonathan to hear them.
We are all so much older now, except Jonathan. I watched Adam Pascal, alone on the 54 Below stage, backed by a pianist, hammering his acoustic guitar and letting go with songs like “Red Hill Mining Town,” by U2 and Bono, or “Rocket Man,” by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. He still sounded damn good, the voice even gaudier, and somehow more flexible than I remembered it in Rent; his face lined (whose isn’t?) but still ruggedly handsome, even just a bit boyish. I listened to him run down songs from musicals he’s played in since Rent: “Elaborate Lives,” from the Elton John Disney musical originally titled Elaborate Lives but later retooled as Aida. “Maybe This Time,” from Cabaret. “Funny Honey,” from Chicago. Well, at least Jonathan knew Cabaret and Chicago, I thought: if not Elaborate Lives/Aida. I bet he would have been tickled to see his Roger Davis go on to do those shows. Who would have imagined such a thing, sitting in that tiny rehearsal room on East 4th Street in 1995?
Not even Jonathan.
Adam P. wove rueful career stories throughout his hour-long set; stories of his own musical theater inexperience initially, as a rock and roll band singer thrust suddenly into the biggest Broadway musical of its time; stories of his ego tripping up his aspirations later on. These were the stories of an aging stage veteran, incongruously uttered by the still “Pretty boy front man/Who wasted opportunity,” to quote Jonathan’s lyric for “One Song Glory,” the song Pascal introduced so heartbreakingly in Rent, the song that has always seemed to me (and many others) Jonathan’s musical death foretold. Adam Pascal sang it again this night at 54 Below, and it still brought tears to my eyes. And a kind of smile. For us all.