A strange thing happens in the theatre world sometimes when a show becomes an international phenomenon, and as time passes I think it is easy for perspective to get lost amid the screaming, crying fan girls and the media poised to either spin utter sensationalism or attack and tear a work of art to shreds, if only to prove that its success has gotten too big for its britches. We forget the show’s roots. We lose the show’s truth, and in our attempt to either follow the trends or condemn them, we often end up judging a show not on its own merits, but on all the elements that have been lacquered on since its inception. This is precisely the situation that I see plaguing Jonathan Larson’s musical Rent, which plays at the Canon Theatre until January 24th.
Jonathan Larson worked on Rent between 1989 and 1995, and before his untimely death from an aortic aneurysm on January 25th, 1996 at the age of thirty-five; Rent was about to open at the New York Theatre Workshop, an off-Broadway theatre of 75 seats which has since become acclaimed for its commitment to developing new works. Larson died before Rent transferred to Broadway in April 1996, a decision which was made because the show was continuing to sell out and extending its run off-Broadway. This decision was entirely consistent with the transferring of hundreds of other small off-Broadway shows to Broadway. It is to Larson’s credit that his show won the 1996 Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Score of a Musical as well as the Pulitzer Prize. He was not there to reap any of the fruits of his labours or his successes.
You can turn Rent into a pity party worth its own weight in any sob sister’s tears, and people have argued that Rent’s success has been contingent only on the tragic story of its creator’s death which accompanies it. There is no way of knowing what Rent’s fate would have been had Jonathan Larson lived past its off-Broadway dress rehearsal. But, I think it is fair to say that Rent would have been continually work shopped and tweaked like that of any other show had Larson been there to take it from show to show at the New York Theatre Workshop and had he known his show was going to move to Broadway. Rent is indeed frozen in time, like a voice message from someone beloved that has passed away that no one has the heart to delete. Rent isn’t perfect, and yet, it still has proven to have the ability to touch and change lives, to connect ardently to an entire generation of people, to help ignite contemporary musical theatre and to send thousands of young people, impassioned and invigorated, into a theatre for the first time. Critics of this show can admit that they are baffled, that they don’t understand or don’t “get” Rent or its appeal, but there is no denying fifteen years of unfaltering devotion, not only by teenagers, but by people of all ages and cultures, worldwide, who hold ardently onto this show as a beacon of hope and who ardently connect to the message that Jonathan Larson offers in a language that may appear to some as being “unfocused” or “intellectually incoherent,” but that must resonate clearly, strongly, resolutely and even, I would suggest, poignantly, for millions of people.
Jonathan Larson did what theatre artists preach should be the gospel to the creation of true art: he wrote from his heart. He did not write Rent to become a millionaire. He did not write Rent because he thought it was exactly what a producer would want to buy. He did not sacrifice his vision to fit into the typical constraints of musical theatre or drama in 1995. He clung adamantly to his choice that Mimi should live at the end of the show (for better or for worse), despite the fact that many advised him against it. How sadly ironic that Larson, who so resolutely wanted his show to end with life, would ultimately end up casting a haunting shadow of death over it regardless. As most people know, Rent is based loosely on Puccini’s opera La Boheme, and since his death there have been dramaturgical wars which attest to the fact that he did not create the musical entirely without help. Despite all this, however, Larson primarily wrote Rent about his own personal experience living in New York in the mid 1990s, surrounded by his friends who were dying of HIV and struggling to survive as artists in poverty and constant compromise. The world he pays loving homage to, “La Vie Boheme,” was his entire world, and I feel like, whether we understand or we connect to it or not, dismissing and belittling someone’s very personal celebration of all that they held most dear during a precarious time in their lives, is wildly insensitive and also rude.
Mark feels like an outsider because he is healthy and free of addiction amid a world where addiction and disease are rampant. He is attempting to document the lives of those who are most important to him because he knows that their time is running out. He is heartbroken and emotionally ravaged, but he is detaching himself from feeling alive so he can survive another day without crumbling. Roger cannot decide whether he has enough strength to allow himself to care about another person who is going to die on him. Roger is not confident enough in his own strength and will power to know whether or not loving Mimi will send him spiralling back into his old drug habit. Joanne and Maureen and Roger and Mimi exemplify the absurdity of human relationships, every futile fight and all the moments we waste being angry at one another over that which is ultimately trivial, and all the moments we waste treating the people we love most very badly. What is so heartbreaking and so genuine in Rent is that here Larson shows how even when people are continually aware that time is slipping away, that doesn’t mean that they’re not going to waste it. Collins and Angel seize the joy in every moment, they find the love in even the most ominous of situations, but not everyone reacts to extreme stress and fear in an ideal way. Roger reacts in anger. Maureen reacts by creating superficial drama as a means of distraction from the reality of her pain and fear. Yet, Rent doesn’t condemn these characters for their choices. Mark loves Roger. Mark loves Maureen. Larson doesn’t give us perfect characters here because his audience will never be filled with perfect people.
Jonathan Larson was not a teenager when he wrote Rent. He was born in 1960 which is a far cry from even the teenagers who wept while watching the show fifteen years ago, those who were born in the late 1970s or early 1980s. It is an even bigger cry from the teenagers who have thrown themselves just as ardently and passionately into this show today, children who were born while Larson was writing the show. Larson spent most of his adult life trying to find the balance between working enough at his job as a waiter so that he could survive and dedicating enough time to his art so that he would accomplish the goals that drove his life’s purpose. Perhaps he pushed his fantasy a bit far with Roger and Mark feeling so entitled to live their lives rent free, when that is simply not a “realistic” option. Yet, that is not the point of Rent, the song or the show. I find this aspect of Rent hard to explain, yet it is something that I find becomes more and more pertinent to me as I grow older. As artists we seek to follow our dreams and to commit our time and our energy to doing that which we see as being significant and important to us and to the artistic world in all its loftiness. Often our parents, who care about us, as Jonathan Larson’s did, seek to bail us out of the precariousness of our chosen path. They call, they worry, and sometimes they offer us money or various “opportunities.” But, at what cost to our dreams? We love our parents, but if they’re becoming frustrated by our passionate dedication to our dreams amid our poverty, sometimes we do screen their calls. Sometimes we might even think we hate them- or better yet, we hate the rigid “reality” that they respresent for us. It is a fantasy for Mark and Roger to live rent-free, sure. Yet, I found it impossible to walk among the streets in Vancouver when I lived there, to see the rows and rows of sleeping bags on the streets, the junkies clinging to the last ounce of their lives, the prostitutes who could still be called “kids” in many circles, without being filled with a sense that there was great injustice happening here. Why couldn’t they afford their rent? Could I condemn their situations as being “all their fault”? Is it all squalor and misery here? Is there no joy at all in the lives of the people who live here? Is there no love? Can we as theatre critics even begin to presume that we know? If growing up means losing our compassion for less fortunate people, for blaming homelessness on the homeless and addiction on the addicted, I hope to never stop seeing the world through the eyes of a teenager.
Jonathan Larson lived in Alphabet City in the mid 1990s. He wrote about the life that he experienced. He wrote about the people that he encountered and he chose to write about love. There is something in Rent that binds people to it, and this cannot be denied. I would argue that Larson’s passion, his reverence and love for the people he was writing about is that thing. At his book signing at Indigo on Friday, Anthony Rapp said that Rent, and Larson’s legacy, is a message that says, given that you don’t know how much time you have left, how are you going to choose to fill your life? Jonathan chose love, a choice that is clear not only in his show, but in all the research into his life that I have done over the past thirteen years. Love is implicit in his show, it radiates from its performers with magical urgency, even fifteen years later. Rent isn’t about its success and it isn’t about the Renthead phenomenon. Rent is one person’s celebration of a specific lifestyle, a specific philosophy and the lives of dear friends written from what this one person perceived as the shadows of their looming deaths. Not everyone will understand Rent, if you don’t see the world like Jonathan Larson did, you may not be able to appreciate his perspective, but to attack him and attempt to tear down and invalidate everything that he dedicated his life to sharing with the world speaks to the same coldness and lack of empathy that Rent shines so strongly against.
We like to think that we have come so far since 1995. The AIDS epidemic has been successfully cloistered to the degree that sex is no longer something that young people feel the need to protect themselves against. We consider that equality has flourished, despite obvious examples to the contrary. Rent, I have heard it argued, is dated and speaks to the concerns and the experiences of a time which no longer reflects the present- Alphabet City has been successfully gentrified, after all. And yet, it still seems to me wholly significant that, even fifteen years later, the messages of Rent are still seen as so threatening to certain people who seem to personify the three piece suit stereotype that Larson mentions briefly in “La Vie Boheme.” Perhaps Rent is difficult to watch because it reminds some of us how little has changed since 1995. Perhaps Rent is difficult to watch because it celebrates a group of people who we feel intimidated by and we have spent our entire lives convincing ourselves that we are superior to them, and that their lives are inferior to us and this show seems to suggest that we are mistaken. Perhaps Rent is difficult to watch because we resent the fact that so many people seem to have had a life altering experience in the theatre, when we, for whatever reason, had a more lacklustre reaction. Whatever our reasons for finding Rent difficult to watch, they are our reasons and they can never diminish the fact that this show, for fifteen years, has had the power to spread love and hope and to change lives on a global scale in a world where despair and injustice seems often insurmountable. Rent is about choosing what we focus on in the time that we have left. What critics choose to focus on when they write about the show speak volumes. It’s little wonder, then, that I too have chosen to write about love.
