How do you measure ten years?
It was almost an overnight success — an iconic piece of Broadway that infected the hearts and minds of thousands. Personally, I don’t see the appeal. I tend to agree with Cintra Wilson who once described it as “Cats with AIDS.” Think of it what you will, there is no denying the fact that Rent is now over a decade old. The fact that people are still performing it means that people are still seeing it. It came to the Milwaukee Theatre this past weekend on its way to Illinois, Louisiana and a host of other engagements. In spite of little advance publicity and almost no advertising, opening night was well attended. I was there.
I was in college when Rent debuted Off-Broadway, and I am only a few years younger than Rent’s writer/composer Jonathan Larson. The costuming, set design, and overall visual aesthetics of the original musical, which are maintained in the touring production, came from the mid-nineties. It’s a look which will live on for decades to come in subsequent productions long after contemporary fashion has rendered them silly and antiquated. With its continued success and barely wavering popularity, Rent is my generation’s Hair.
Seeing an audience filled with high schoolers feels strange. These kids were in grade school when Rent debuted. They’re watching Rent the same way my generation watched mid-80s John Hughes movies like The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles. They’re seeing a freshly-minted retro-pop-culture beginning its slow, steady march into nostalgia, then old age. They don’t know people like the characters in Rent. They will have to wait at least another ten years to see bizarrely romanticized musical theatre versions of people they knew ten years ago singing and dancing onstage.
For the right people, this is a pleasant trip to big Broadway for a slightly off-center musical, but its artistic merit beyond that is highly suspect. Kushner’s Angels In America covered many of the same themes in a much more sophisticated package. There is genuine emotion in Rent, but it is lost in the big machine of a shiny, beloved commercial musical. VS
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