RENT: No Day But Today

I finally saw RENT after it ended its 12-year run on Broadway when it came to Chicago. The show had a lot to live up to; it may be one of the most hyped and parodied modern plays there is. My closest exposure to it for a while was the "Everyone Has AIDS" song from the parody LEASE in Team America: World Police. Then when the movie was released in 2005, I remember seeing a trailer featuring the song "Seasons of Love". I remember really enjoying that song and having a curiosity about the show ever since. And while RENT isn't my favorite play, it certainly ranks up there on the list, and it is certainly an important play. In addition to being directed toward a much different audience than the "traditional" Broadway play, I truly believe that we wouldn't have gotten the incredible Avenue Q without RENT.

RENT is a retelling of Puccini's La Boheme; it follows the story of a group of artists and performers in New York City when AIDS was at the height of its notoriety (the disease is still a real problem today, but it doesn't get the widespread attention and fear it once did). Half of the lead characters have the disease, and part of the central premise examines how they all deal with living with AIDS. One person has all but given up on life, another is trying to do everything she put off in life, while another accepts fate and goes on with life. Even one of the unaffected characters has to learn how to live with the fact that he will still be living once most of his friends have succumbed to the disease.

The first act takes place over the course of an evening (Christmas Eve) and the second act follows the characters over the course of a year, from New Year's Day to Christmas Eve, as they try to be happy in their relationships, their jobs (assuming they have jobs), and continue living. Only one character has any measure of wealth at all, and he didn't earn it, he married into it. Another character is a lawyer, but she does public interest work that keeps her in Alphabet City with the artists and musicians. The two leads, Mark Cohen and Roger Davis, are an aspiring filmmaker and struggling musician who can never find success. They and they're friends are happy with being creative, as opposed to being "suits" like their former friend Benny, who married a wealthy girl and became the new landlord, but the life of an artist has its hardships.

The show has a racially diverse cast, uses plenty of foul language, and features a character who is a homosexual crossdresser, all of which are pretty rare in musicals, which tend to be a somewhat conservative medium. I was trying to think of shows that came before RENT that could be labeled as going against normal Broadway type, and all I could think of was Sweeney Todd (although, I'm not really a Broadway scholar), and although Todd uses course language, the plot of revenge and murder isn't too far removed from operatic plots. After RENT came Wicked, which had a lot of subversive messages underneath its family-friendly veneer, Reefer Madness, and Avenue Q, which can be seen on the other side of the coin of RENT. Each of them take place in run-down parts of New York City (Alphabet City for RENT and a fictional place that also uses one-letter avenues in Avenue Q), and each one is about trying to cope with life with little money. However, RENT represents the tragedies of life while Avenue Q uses humor to explain that life is hard but is also livable.

Up next: Ch-ch-ch-changes...