RENT

As a teenager in the 1960s and early1970s growing up to a dual soundtrack of Broadway musicals on the family stereo and rock’n’roll on my transistor, their synthesis into rock musicals like Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar and Rocky Horror was my theatrical and musical happy place.

Fast forward to 1996 and RENT, with Jonathan Larson’s rock re-envisioning of Puccini’s La bohème translating the bohemian Parisian artistic world into a contemporary community of artists and performers in New York’s East Village. Long before I saw it on Broadway, I was in love with the show, the score firmly imprinted on my consciousness thanks to the cast recording.

RENT’s urgency in telling a story of a New York’s marginalised, impoverished bohemian arts community, ravaged by HIV/AIDS, really affected me. Like Hair before it, rock the was the perfect, quintessential musical voice for RENT’s young, disenfranchised characters.

Documentary filmmaker Mark frames the story of those characters, his friends; often more narrator than insider, he guides us via his film-making perspective, with Henry Rollo capturing that balance of involvement and detachment very well.

Harry Targett’s Roger, an HIV-positive musician and recovering heroin addict, dreaming of writing that last great song before he dies, is full of anger and frustration.

Rollo and Targett’s “What You Own” in Act 2, as both ‘own’ their personal and artistic truths, is blistering.

Kristin Paulse’s exotic dancer Mimi (also HIV Positive), is as vibrant and vivacious as any performer I’ve seen in the role, imbuing her with touching, underlying vulnerability. Targett and Paulse ensure that the fragile relationship between Roger and Mimi is engaging, dynamic, and often quite heartbreaking.

As avant-garde performance artist Maureen (Mark’s ex), Calista Nelmes almost steals the show with her outlandish performance-art piece “Over The Moon”, then Nelmes faces off with Imani Williams, as Maureen’s lawyer girlfriend, Joanne, in a fiery, no-holds-barred “Take Me Or Leave Me”.

Angel’s name alone conjures a mystical resonance for the busking street drummer (also HIV-positive). Jesse Dutlow captures both the fun and the gender-complexity of a role which now feels well ahead of its time, prescient writing for 1996, with relevance which continues to evolve.

Has part-time college lecturer Collins morphed into more of a radical political and social advocate in this iteration from Googoorewon Knox? It felt that way to me.

A talented, young, high energy local musical theatre ensemble, and a rockin’ band led byJack Earle provide great support.

The affected minorities are different today, yet the resonances of RENT remain, echoing reports from both Trump’s America and other communities globally, where people are displaced and marginalised by war, famine, politics (not to mention property development), and all too often The Arts are devalued.

I find myself asking whether RENT has moved on from being that ground-breaking musical of its time, to being a classic, or ‘Iconic’, today. The themes remain pertinent, yet in some ways the story has taken on an allegorical quality.

Is it just that I’m getting older? Have the characters and setting of RENT lost something of their immediacy and urgency for me? A couple of days after seeing this new version, though. I continue to reflect on the current local and global concerns, resonances and crises which it now illuminates.

Thirty years on, I’d say the Pulitzer Prize judges spotted the universality of RENT.

And, once the latest Broadway great showstopper, “Seasons of Love” has become a beloved anthem. Dare I say 'Iconic'?

Neil Litchfield

Photographer: Neil Bennett