Rent: How It’s Able to Stay Relevant
By Noah Peterlin, 4/25/19
“In these dangerous times, where it seems the world is ripping apart at the seams, we can all learn how to survive from those who stare death squarely in the face every day, and we should reach out to each other and bond as a community, rather than hide from the terrors of life at the end of the millennium.”
– Jonathan Larson
(Note: The following contains spoilers for the musical Rent)
When the AIDS epidemic rolled around the United States in the late eighties, the majority of Americans either blamed the LGBT community for bringing it onto themselves or simply ignored it as if it’s just the common cold that you wouldn’t want. That’s when playwrights came about and decided to do something nobody wanted to do: Create a movement. Three plays were created to begin such movement: The Normal Heart, Angels in America and Rent. Although all of these plays are considered some of the greatest American plays of our time, the play that’s most discussed is Rent.
It’s not like the other two are being completely ignored, as The Normal Heart gained a revival on Broadway in 2011 and a HBO film adaptation in 2014. Angels in America had a miniseries in 2003 and a revival in 2018. Each of these, in retrospect, has gained their own popularity and rave reviews from critics and fans alike. Yet, no matter how one knows or sees it, Rent always appears to be the particular favorite of the bunch. To some, it’s possibly because it’s the only musical of the three and had songs that were so catchy and easy to remember that it just became a staple in their heads. Or maybe there’s something more behind the fossa of it all.
For starters, the theme is what helps carry the idea for any and all creators. With The Normal Heart, the theme is all related in wanting to have a voice; a voice that can be heard loud and clear in a world that wishes to silence them entirely. Angels in America deals with the jarring political climate and religious oddities and how the mixture can create war and destruction in both societal and personal relationships. Rent, on the other hand, deals with the subjects of love, acceptance and celebration of a culture. Those seem like simple, corny themes to base an entire musical off of, but an inspection proves that this idea may just be what audiences needed:
Throughout the first half of the Act I, Roger has kept himself secluded to his rundown apartment he shares with his friend, Mark, due to feelings of guilt and self-negative reflection he has over the death of his girlfriend years prior. The reason for this is because his girlfriend advised him before her death that they both had AIDS. In the song “Another Day”, Roger rejects the notion from their neighbor, Mimi, that life, whether they like it or not, won’t grant them the happy ending they desire and not to hide away and just make whatever life you have left worth living. However, it’s only after he sits and ponders during “Will I?” does he realize that what he has been doing has been sheltering himself over guilt from an event that, whether he wants to admit or not, couldn’t have been stopped either way. This type of acceptance is hard to grasp to the viewer and may find some people turning heads upon that fact, but life itself has never nor ever will be kind to any of us in the long run.
The celebration itself comes from the culture in which its setting takes place: Alphabet City within the East village of Manhattan. During this time, being a Bohemian became a more natural occurrence, especially seeing artists trying to survive their way through tough times of the late eighties and early-to-mid nineties. The author, Jonathan Larson, never lived there, but visited it many times and found the spot so intriguing and so poignant that he set the entire show within the City itself to celebrate its massive and ingenious culture. That’s what the song, “La Vie Boheme” means essentially; it’s a celebration of life and bohemia, the starving artists who work day in and day out to have their voices heard.
Of course, all of this sounds very narrow-minded when studying just the themes of Rent, but there’s also a bit of relatable feelings that occur here. Now, that’s not to say that neither The Normal Heart nor Angels in America don’t have these same feelings. The Normal Heart is reported to be largely autobiographical while Angels in America injects many of playwright Tony Kushner’s philosophical and religious beliefs into each of the characters and themes. For Jonathan Larson, however, the whole musical is not only his life, but those of his previous friend group.
When the AIDS epidemic rolled around, the majority of his friend group had contracted the virus and was told by their doctors to get their affairs in order, some not even offering any support of any kind. Jonathan felt for each of them and was shocked and ticked that nothing was being done to stop the epidemic from ending. While each of the characters share a bit of Jonathan within them, they also share the lives of those that touched Jonathan, almost to the point of not just being autobiographical, but being entirely documentary-esque. It’s moments of when Mark picks up his camera to film all of life around him that you feel that none of these individuals were created for dramatic effect, but rather to reveal what real people are like and how they functioned in such an indisposed time.
Audiences related to this so much that they began to create groups of friends and called themselves Rent-Heads, with many of these friendships have lasted well past the show’s final performance on Broadway in late 2008. The American Theatre Wings shared these same sentiments and awarded the show its highest honor for Best Musical and to Jonathan Larson for Best Book and Score of a musical. Unfortunately, Jonathan wasn’t able to bask in these moments as he had died a year prior of an aortic aneurysm, just a single night before the opening of his show had even occurred.
A couple months back, Rent was aired partially live on Fox with people critiquing how it wasn’t live as promoted as one of the lead actors broke his foot and wasn’t cleared to performand how it sounded like a dress rehearsal due to the footage shown being a dress rehearsal and especially how the lyrics were changed to fit the mainstream since they can’t have the f-bomb be thrown around on a national channel. However, if we were to remove all of that, the message was still broadcasted pretty clear. The themes of love, acceptance and culture, the notion of how real every character still felt—it never went away.
Rent isn’t just some other show you see on/off Broadway for a good evening. The majority of those who spend a night in theatre with the show say they walk out without a dry eye. They begin thinking of the messages that the show tried to throw at us so casually like a conversation being given to us.
Rent isn’t a thing of the past. It’s still a vital part of today’s pop culture and conversations we have about each other. It created friendships and relationships. It created the idea of acceptance of what’s to come and to live curiously for what’s to come next. If any of us were like Roger and decided to simply throw these ideas out and forget about them, there will always be that one Mimi who reminds us that there’s “No Day But Today.”