Hard to believe, but Chula Vista’s OnStage Playhouse is putting on the rock musical Rent. Why, hard to believe? Because the theater is small, the stage even smaller–yet 22 actors and actresses enter and exit, dance and sing, almost flawlessly in this tiny space.

Rent is inspired by Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Boheme. In both productions, illness, poverty, life’s brevity, and their own artistic aspirations drive the characters. Both the opera and the musical are classical in their appeal to tragedy and subversive in the people and virtues they choose to lionize.

An early scene in La Boheme and Rent show the way the musical mirrors the opera. In the opera, Rodolfo, a starving poet, and Mimi a poor seamstress who fashions silk flowers, fall in love when she comes to the door seeking a light for her candle. Rodolfo seizes her hand and sings “Che Gelida Manina.” Gradually, the audience learns Mimi has tuberculosis and the precariousness of life and love play out.

In Rent Mimi, (Ariana Ramirez), comes to Roger’s loft and asks him to light her candle. Her hands are cold and she is dizzy with hunger. Roger, (Daniel Newheiser), is an impoverished guitarist/songwriter and recovering drug addict who is HIV positive. Mimi, also HIV positive, works as a dancer at the Cat Scratch lounge. In the duet, “Light My Candle” Ramirez and Newheiser hit the right balance between sexy and vulnerable.

The talented and sassy performances of Angel (Seejay Lewis), who plays an HIV positive, cross dresser, and Erin (Maureen Johnson) a pouty performance artist who is endlessly arguing with her lesbian lover, sometimes threaten to absorb the small stage and other actors.

But the well-blended voices of the chorus and edgy lyrics of the libretto tie the whole musical together and make for a pleasurable experience. Produced by Jessica Brandon and directed by Nick Williams, “Rent” runs through May 30.