Rent (Broadway)
Opening Night: April 29, 1996
Closing: September 7, 2008
Theater: Nederlander Theatre
Jonathan Larson’s rock musical retelling of the La Bohème story, but relocated to AIDS-era East Village, New York. A penniless songwriter’s love for a young woman grows even as illness begins to consume her. The poet Rodolfo is now punk rocker Roger. Tubercular Mimi is now an AIDS-infected dancer at an S&M nightclub. Painter Marcello is now aspiring filmmaker Mark Cohen, and so forth. The ending is transformed from the opera, but the theme of love striving to endure beyond all obstacles remains. Songs include “Seasons of Love,” “Without You,” “Out Tonight,” “One Song Glory,” “I’ll Cover You” and “Santa Fe.”
READ THE REVIEWS:
April 29, 1996
"Rent, Jonathan Larson’s luminous, youthful musical that started off at the tiny New York Theater Workshop on East Fourth Street in February, opened on Broadway last night at the Nederlander Theater . . ."
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April 29, 1996
"Rent is the best show in years, if not decades. Larson, on the cusp of 36 when he died of an aortic aneurysm, wrote songs in a wide range of pop idioms, from rock anthems and ballads to gospel to loping Western laments to old-fashioned Broadway show-stoppers."
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April 29, 1996
"At last, a show that lives up to its hype! Rent is theatre at its best: passionate, exhuberant, uplifting, and joyous."
READ THE REVIEW