How Many Seconds? "Rent" @ 25

It seems like every couple of decades a Broadway musical comes along that not only is good but truly great, and not only great but also so original, so groundbreaking, that it evolves the artistic form of musical theater and pushes it forward into the future. 

In the 1970s it was A Chorus Line. In the 2010s it was Hamilton. And in the 1990s it was Rent. 

Debuting in early 1996, twenty-five years ago, Rent is that rare musical that was not only a big hit but also a cultural phenomenon. People sang the songs in their homes, with their friends, on the streets, and in school choruses. It was on TV, the major media covered. It was parodied, relentlessly. It was everywhere.

It even became that rare musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, something that happens maybe once a decade.

Rent was the vision of a man named Jonathan Larson, a young musical fan who spent years writing it (with some help, apparently, that lead to a lawsuit). It was a re-telling of La Boheme, about young people dying of AIDS in NYC in the early 1990s while trying to stay in their building on the Lower East Side. Back then, you didn't see shows about subjects like this, with characters like this, on Broadway. Also, rock musicals weren't really mainstream yet -- in the 1990s, Broadways was still very high on the big opera-like musical spectacles like Cats, Les Miz, and Miss Saigon. Then came along this very offbeat show about very offbeat people living offbeat lives, singing songs about love and death, hope and despair, in a very modern, ultra-recognizable world -- and it blew everything else on Broadway away. 

Just as Rent was opening Off-Broadway, Larson tragically died from an aneurysm and didn't live to see how quickly the show transferred to Broadway and became a Tony-winning megahit, the hottest ticket in town, and eventually a movie. I remember watching the Tony-awards that year and seeing his sister collect his awards, reminding everyone how long it took for her brother to become an overnight success.   

I still listen to the album from time to time, and it never ceases to bring me joy. In 1996 I was in college, living far away from NYC, and listening to the album always me brought home -- NYC on my mind, you might say. 

It still has that transcendant effect. 

I've blogged about Rent and its Bohemian spirit over the years. The show was still running when this blog debuted in 2007, I covered its closure in 2008. So end of the original Broadway and the start of this blog touched in a way. That makes me happy.

And we'll still be listening to, and talking about, Rent 25 years from now.