Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Reflecting on 25 years of RENT: Remembering a white hot performance and its lasting impact

• By drediman
• March 9, 2021
• No Comments

I’m not exaggerating when I say that Rent changed my life 25 years ago, as it did for its legions of fans. I was a junior at a parochial high school in upstate New York when a fellow theater geek – who had somehow managed to snag a coveted ticket to the legendary Off-Broadway run at New York Theatre Workshop – fervently recommended that I take a train down to the city to catch the original production of the trailblazing rock musical (thank you, Rebecca!). At that point in time, the production had just rushed its transfer uptown to the Great White Way, and emotions were still running high from the tragic, sudden passing of Jonathan Larson, the musical’s beloved creator. So for one of the very first Broadway previews, I purchased the cheapest ticket available – then $30 for quite a decent mid-mezzanine seat (I had yet to learn about the $20 rush tickets!) – from the Nederlander Theatre box office and wandered into the appropriately decrepit-chic auditorium to check out what all the fuss was about. I walked out of that matinee performance dazed, light-headed, and altered.

What I had experienced in the interim was a blaze of life and diversity unlike anything I had experienced in my life up until that point. Indeed, a revolution happened on the Nederlander stage that would have a lasting impact on my life (even one of my college essays was inspired by the musical!). Coming to the show as a devotee of such symphonic musicals as Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Secret Garden, I was caught off guard by the scrappy, raw, and very adult world, characters, and aesthetic of Rent. As a closeted gay teen, it helped me start coming to terms with my sexuality and empathize more fully with people’s differences. Additionally, the show’s overarching philosophy of embracing connection/community and living as if one had “no day but today” still informs my actions and choices in life. As for the cast, they were on fire that afternoon, lighting up the stage with a sexy, full-tilt energy that I vividly recall to this day. Of course, many in the original company would go on to further stardom, but the chemistry and common sense of purpose of that initial bunch left a defining imprint that expanded my appreciation of the unique vitality of live performance.

Since that fateful white hot performance a quarter of a century ago, I’ve seen Rent onstage more times than I can count (more often than not “rushing” the show, and not including the film adaptation nor the Fox television special). Apart from visiting the Broadway production numerous times during its 12-year run, I also saw the original West End mounting, countless national tour performances, the revised Off-Broadway staging, as well as a number of regional productions (notably a distinctive production in Chicago directed by David Cromer). Aside from the aforementioned impacts the iconic show has had on me and my worldview, it’s also had some subtler effects. For example, knowing that the musical was based on La bohème, I was inspired to seek out Puccini’s underlying evergreen work, thereby instigating my longstanding love of opera. In fact, Rent‘s rock and roll vernacular actually has more in common with the visceral passion of opera than it does with the tidy spirit of traditional musical theater. Viva la vie bohème!