Rent - Musical Essay Example
There's a scene in the new musical "RENT" that may be the quintessential romantic moment of the '90s. Roger, a struggling rock musician, and Mimi, a junkie who's a dancer at an S/M club, are having a lovers' quarrel when their beepers go off and each takes out a bottle of pills. It's the signal for an "AZT break," and suddenly they realize that they're both HIV-positive. Clinch. Love duet. If you don't think this is romantic, consider that Jonathan Larson's sensational musical is inspired by Puccini's opera "La
Boheme," in which the lovers Mimi and Rodolfo are tragically separated by her death from tuberculosis.
Different age, different plague. Larson has updated
Puccini's end-of-19th-century Left Bank bohemians to end-of-20th-century struggling artists in New York's East
Village. His rousing, moving, scathingly funny show, performed by a cast of youthful unknowns with explosive talent and staggering energy, has brought a shocking jolt of creative juice to Broadway. A far greater shock was the sudden death of 35-year-old Larson from an aortic aneurysm just before his show opened. His death just before the breakthrough success is the stuff of both tragedy and tabloids. Such is our culture. Now Larson's work, along with "Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk," the tap-dance musical starring the marvelous young dancer
Savion Glover, is mounting a commando assault on
Broadway from the downtown redoubts of off-Broadway.
Both are now encamped amid the revivals ("The King and
I") and movie adaptations ("Big") that have made
Broadway such a creatively fallow field in recent seasons.
And both are oriented to an audience younger than
Broadway usually attracts. If both, or either, settle in for a successful run, the door may open for new talent to reinvigorate the once dominant American musical theater.
"RENT" so far has the sweet smell of success, marked no only by it's $6 million advance sale (solid, but no guarantee) but also by the swarm
Boheme," in which the lovers Mimi and Rodolfo are tragically separated by her death from tuberculosis.
Different age, different plague. Larson has updated
Puccini's end-of-19th-century Left Bank bohemians to end-of-20th-century struggling artists in New York's East
Village. His rousing, moving, scathingly funny show, performed by a cast of youthful unknowns with explosive talent and staggering energy, has brought a shocking jolt of creative juice to Broadway. A far greater shock was the sudden death of 35-year-old Larson from an aortic aneurysm just before his show opened. His death just before the breakthrough success is the stuff of both tragedy and tabloids. Such is our culture. Now Larson's work, along with "Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk," the tap-dance musical starring the marvelous young dancer
Savion Glover, is mounting a commando assault on
Broadway from the downtown redoubts of off-Broadway.
Both are now encamped amid the revivals ("The King and
I") and movie adaptations ("Big") that have made
Broadway such a creatively fallow field in recent seasons.
And both are oriented to an audience younger than
Broadway usually attracts. If both, or either, settle in for a successful run, the door may open for new talent to reinvigorate the once dominant American musical theater.
"RENT" so far has the sweet smell of success, marked no only by it's $6 million advance sale (solid, but no guarantee) but also by the swarm