Rent Strikes

A new rock opera celebrates life after the death of its creator

Rolling Stone
May 16, 1996
By Jon Widerhorn

The day before his rock opera, Rent, was scheduled to begin previews at a small off-Broadway theater in New York's East Village, the composer and playwright Jonathan Larson felt like he was coming down with the flu. Tired, pale and feverish, he had also experience chest pains and had visited two emergency rooms earlier in the week. His symptoms had been diagnosed as food poisoning, but some of his colleagues thought he might be suffering pre-show jitters. After all, Larson had poured seven years of soul-searching work into Rent, an emotionally stirring story about young East Village artists struggling to celebrate life in the shadow of drugs, poverty and AIDS. Within days, the show and its 31 songs incorporating dance pop, salsa, R&B and hard rock would be dissected by a roomful of snobby critics.

Larson needn't have worried. A mere 24 hours after opening night, the box office had sold $38,000 worth of tickets--the entire five-week run. By the end of the week, a month-long extension was sold out as well. The show receive gushing reviews and has since been attended by such luminaries as Steven Spielberg, Al Pacino, Sylvester Stallone, Ivan Boesky, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman, and a slew of record-company executives vying for the rights to the soundtrack. What's more, there are reports that Jody Watley wants to cover songs from the show, and sources say Whitney Houston is interested in securing the film rights. The production, which recently won the Pulitzer Prize, has just moved uptown to Broadway's Nederlander Theater.

Unfortunately, Larson will never reap the rewards of his hard work. While preparing a kettle of tea, he suffered an aortic aneurysm and died on Jan. 25, 1996. Only 35 years old, he was considered to be in good physical health. It's both tragic and ironic that Larson, who was only able to quite his day job as a SoHo waiter two months before he died, never saw ticket holders enjoy his show. Even more uncanny are the parallels between Larson's life and his characters', many of whom cling to life knowing that it could end at any moment. "One song before I go/One song to leave behind," sings Roger, an HIV-positive punk rocker, in "One Song Glory," near the beginning of Rent. And at the show's conclusion, the song "Finale/Your Eyes" reiterates the idea with the lines, "There is no future, there is no past/I live this moment as my last."

"It's almost like Jonathan wrote his own funeral," says Nancy Kassak Diekmann, the managing director of the New York Theatre Workshop. "The play is about his life in every way." Larson was born in White Plain, New York, and after graduating from Adelphi University, he decided to devote his life to the theater. Over the years, Larson composed two musicals, J.P. Morgan Saves the Nation and Suberbia, and a rock monologue, Tick, tick...Boom!, which he performed at the New York Theatre Workshop, where Rent would open several years later. While living in New York's East Village, he befriended many AIDS sufferers, whose strength and courage inspired him to create the characters in Rent.

To a certain degree, Larson's demise served as a catalyst for the success of the rock opera. The press turned the event into an epic tale of life imitating art, with Time, Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal devoting an unusual amount of coverage to the off-Broadway play. In addition, the cast members were drawn closer together by the desire to do justice to Larson's striking script.

"It became a lot more real, and it really stripped away a lot of the bullshit," says Daphne Rubin-Vega, who plays Mimi, one of the show's romantic leads. "All the words in the play made sense, so it wasn't just a story anymore. The day after he died was supposed to be opening night. We all went to the theater early and huddled together like animals in a fucking storm. It was weird and galvanized in the sense that it was bigger than us. All of a sudden it was, 'Oh, shit, we're in something that's bigger than us.'"

Instead of staging a performance that evening, the producers of Rent scheduled a sing-through memorial for the benefit of Larson's friends and family. "They were all crying, and we were crying, and we were trying to sing these songs, which are really beautiful," says Adam Pascal, who plays Mimi's love interest, Roger. "It felt so wonderful because it was so cathartic. I'm not one to lose it, but you can't help it in a situation like that. It was probably one of the most moving experiences in my whole life."

Rent is loosely based on the Puccini opera La Boheme. Rodolfo the lovelorn poet becomes Roger the punk rocker; Marcello the painter is Mark Cohen the videographer; Mimi the tuberculosis victim is transformed into Mimi the HIV-positive, heroin-shooting S&M dancer; and Musetta the callous flirt resembles Maureen the sexually ambivalent performance artist who leaves Mark for Joanne, a yuppie lawyer and sound engineer. Then there's Puccini's philosophical Colline, who becomes Tom Collins, a college professor who falls in love with Angel, a transvestite street drummer.

Rent also contains several plot references to the original opera. Where Puccini's Mimi drops a key to attract Rodolfo, Larson's Mimi intentionally loses a heroin bag, and in both productions the main characters are threatened with eviction and burn their written work to stay warm. But enjoyment of the production requires no knowledge of opera. In fact, the music and message are directed primarily at frustrated twentysomethings, an age group not generally thought of as avid theatergoers. Throughout, Larson refers to such youth-culture fixtures such as IMAX, e-mail, the Village Voice and latex sex. And the music for Rent is played by a five-piece band that alternately soothes, swings and rocks.

"I live in the East Village, and a lot of my friends do, and we feel for once we have the opportunity to go to the theater and see ourselves up on that stage," says Anthony Rapp, who plays Mark. "It's a life that we can recognize. It's not like Friends, which is about youths that have a lot of money and live in a loft and never have any serious problems. It's about something a lot more real."

"Hopefully the show will have a positive effect on Broadway theater," adds Pascal. "Broadway doesn't know from rock & roll--except maybe for Tommy, and that's really sugarcoated. I hope we can put a little of the spirit and energy of rock & roll into theater for other plays to come along and do the same thing."

Rent confronts a number of sobering issues--AIDS, drug addiction, romantic disillusionment, artistic struggle, death--but it's not overly moralistic. It's also not a downer. Sure there are several tear-inducing scenes, but Larson places more emphasis on love, friendship and survival. "People need to realize that if you're dealing with these problems, it doesn't mean your life has to be dark and black and gloomy," says Pascal. "If you're suffering with AIDS, the time you have left doesn't need to be wasted."

The second act of Rent opens with "Seasons of Love," a gospel number in which the company sings, "525,600 minutes/How do you figure a last year on earth?/Figure in love." One of the production's most heart-rending songs, it sums up the spirit and pathos of the show. Larson may not have lived long enough to alter the face of Broadway, but his empathy and compassion profoundly affected everyone he was involved with. "Jonathan gave us something that changed our lives," says Rubin-Vega. "And it wasn't just a really fierce career move. It was the real fucking thing, and it's left us with a great pleasure: a very strong prayer every night."