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Rent leaves Broadway with youthful legacy

05.09.2008 21:04 Arts - Source: cbc.ca

Renee Elise Goldsberry, left, and Will Chase star in the current version of Rent on Broadway. Its last day at the Nederlander Theater in New York is Sunday. (Richard Kornberg and Associates/Associated Press)

Rent, the Tony Award-winning musical that opened on Broadway in 1996, finishes its New York run Sunday.

But not without leaving its legacy on the Great White Way, producer Jeffrey Seller said Friday in an interview with CBC cultural affairs program Q.

Rent, a musical that chronicles the struggles of a group of young artists in New York, was groundbreaking in bringing topics such as AIDS and homelessness into the mainstream, Seller said.

"The best role that Rent played was that it opened up Broadway to different fare, to different genres," he said.

"It made it a little bit safer for artists or writers, composers, lyricists, directors and even for producers to bring things to Broadway that don't seem on their surface to be conventional."

He argued Rent paved the way for shows like Spring Awakening, which deals with teen sexuality, or his own production Avenue Q, which combines puppets and people.

It also brought a lot of young fans back to musical theatre, considered the preserve of the grey-headed set, Seller said.

"What has made Rent so popular these last 12 years is, I think, a great majority of the people that go to see Rent feel like they are characters in Rent. There's something about the contemporary stories and these cast members that has touched something inside all the audience members."

The story, based on the Henri Murger novel that Puccini turned into the opera La Bohme, is as fresh now as it was 12 years ago, Sellers said.

"It's absolutely true to that great bohemian love story," he said.

"It's the story really of middle-class kids coming to the city and living a bohemian lifestyle to express themselves as young people before they have to really grow up."

At the same time, everything around the Nederlander Theater on Manhattan's 41st street, where Rent plays, has changed. The area, derelict and a refuge for homeless people in 1996, has become gentrified in the intervening 12 years.

Seller recalled how he met Jonathan Larson, creator of the hit musical, in 1990 when Larson was a struggling and unrecognized writer.

Larson, tragically, didn't live to see the success of the musical he created.

"Rent was shot out of a cannon through extraordinary tragedy," Seller said.

"Because, as most people know, Jonathan tragically died three hours after the final dress rehearsal of an aortic aneurysm.... That certainly brought a lot of attention to the show, because here was an artist that was 35 years old trying to achieve his dreams, with his life cut short by death. And certainly that's one of the themes of the show."

Seller, who went on to win Tony Awards for Avenue Q (2004) and In the Heights (2008), said he's feeling sad and emotional about the end of the Broadway run.

The show will live on with tours and remounts scheduled throughout North America, he said.

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