Rent Tickets

About Rent

'Rent' opened off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop in early 1996, but Larson, 35, fell victim to an aneurysm the day of the first preview and never knew his success. And what a success indeed: 'Rent' quickly moved to Broadway and won every major theatrical award, from the Tony for Best Musical to the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Today, a new cast of relative unknowns sings 'La Vie Boheme' and the anthem-like 'Seasons of Love' nightly, but that's the idea: to discover the future Adam Pascal -- and Anthony Rapp, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Jesse L. Martin, Taye Diggs and Idina Menzel -- of tomorrow.

Rent is a reinvention of the classic La Boheme story except the plague is AIDS rather than consumption. And it isn't Mimi who is dying of AIDS; her suffering is more from a tough life combined with youthful self-destruction. The plot revolves around a group of artist friends living in downtown New York in the early nineties who refuse to pay the rent. But the essence of the show involves relationships among friends and lovers (gay and straight, healthy and HIV-positive).

There is also a coming of age aspect with some very funny phone dialogue as parents refuse to let go of their grown children. But defiance has its price, and cutting themselves off has left them in harms way. Many are now engaged in a life and death struggle which makes the value of love and friendship ever more essential.

Jonathan Larson's rock music underscores the story's humanity. It is memorable, often touching, and loud like a rock concert. Capturing both the 1996 Tony Award for Best Musical and that year's Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Jonathan Larson's ground-breaking rock musical is the story of a group of friends attempting to protect a squatters camp and maintain residency in an East Village building. With powerful performances and a score blending rock, ballads, R&B, and salsa, Rent has reinvented musical theater.