After a 12-year run, Rent closed September 7 as the seventh-longest-running musical in Broadway history. Composer Jonathan Larson was possessed of an idea to update what had been a gritty show in its day – Puccini’s opera La Boheme – into a gritty show of our day.
La Boheme shocked opera audiences of the late 1800s, who were more accustomed to dramatized mythology or broad comedy, with a portrayal of the hard lives and doomed dreams of struggling Parisian artists. Larson updated that plot to New York’s East Village and had the similarly challenged artists dealing with the effects of AIDS on their community.
Larson told The New York Times he wanted to write "Hair for the ‘90s” and attract the MTV generation to musicals. He did both. Rent told multiple stories of people living for today because there might not be a tomorrow.
It featured video artists, performance artists, guitarists, strippers, cross-dressers, drug addicts, friends-turned-enemies and more. It had a driving rock score that the Times called “glittering” and “inventive,” strong melodies, complex harmonies, and more than one nod to the Puccini original.
But despite the grim subject matter, the show works its way to a hopeful conclusion with love transcending tragedy and art transcending commercialism.
As tragic as some aspects of Rent were, so was Larson’s story. The day off-Broadway previews were to begin, Larson, then 36, died of an aortic aneurysm.
Larson worked on the show for seven years before it opened off-Broadway in 1996, and it was an immediate hit with critics and audiences. Its run at the New York Theatre Workshop was extended and plans for a Broadway transfer were immediate.
Larson told the Times he was looking for a way to respond artistically to the AIDS crisis. His rock-operatic method of doing that allowed audiences to connect with the issue in a way that hadn’t been done before.
Rent won the 1996 Tony for Best Musical. In 1995, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard won. In 1997, it was Titanic. Rent was distinctive musically and thematically from its contemporaries.
There is no doubt as to the quality of the music and lyrics. The characters are diverse and complex, leading far-from-perfect lives, and their stories are engaging, moving, and, ultimately, uplifting. It’s a good night at the theater.
Just as Larson said he wanted to reach the MTV generation, it is often said now that producers are trying to reach “the Rent generation.” Larson created a new category of theatergoer with his cast of young characters – some doomed by AIDS, all yearning for something. They attracted young people, who turned out in droves to see their concerns expressed on Broadway and on national touring stages.