A Hot Ticket — Studio C

“A hot ticket: ‘Rent’ promises to be the biggest, boldest musical to hit Madison. And the story behind it is nearly as fascinating as the show itself,” Madison Magazine, April 2000

Four years old, Rent still carries with it a backstage melodrama as compelling as the one that unfolds on-stage. The show struck Broadway gold in 1996, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony® Award for Best Musical. But the road there was paved with the vicissitudes reflected in the play — and ultimately tragedy.

Playwright-composer Jonathan Larson was denied the opportunity to ever see his spirited production mounted before an audience, adoring or otherwise. In the final week of his life, Larson, a longtime resident of Manhattan’s East Village, where the musical is set, made two visits to the emergency room. Doctors dismissed any serious concern, offering such glib diagnoses as pre-show jitters and food poisoning. As he prepared a kettle of tea on the evening of January 25, 1996, only hours after the show’s final dress rehearsal, Larson dropped to the floor, the victim of an aortic aneurysm.

When his body was discovered, plans for the show’s preview performance were scuttled, and an impromptu sing-through memorial benefit was scheduled in its place. Opening two weeks later, Rent, with its bittersweet momentum, boisterous musical score and exuberant cast of East Village bohemians, played to an ecstatic reception, collecting the passionate accolades of the New York and national press. “The breakthrough musical of the ‘90s” declared Newsweek.

Larson had only quit waiting tables at a Soho diner two months before his breakthrough was finally realized. Written and performed by unknowns, Rent, a rock opera examining AIDS, drug addiction and indigence, was the scarcest ticket in town, playing an extended run in a tiny 150-seat not-for-profit theater. The show attracted comparisons to A Chorus Lineand Hair, its creator was dubbed a downtown-Sondheim, a Pulitzer Prize for Drama was awarded — and all before the show ever hit the venerable Great White Way.

Just three months after Larson’s death, Rent was transposed to the proportions of the Broadway stage, playing to audiences nearly 10 times the size, at 10 times the cost of the original production. Its story, based on Puccini’s La Boheme(wherein a 19th-century painter becomes a late-20th-century videographer, etc.), resonated as deeply with Broadway audiences; and the songs, written to the contemporary rhythms of pop, salsa, R & B and heavy metal, inspired talk of a resurrection of the Broadway musical.

In May, 10 Tony® nominations came — the most given to any Broadway show in 1996. In July, nearly 3,000 hopefuls lined up for a quarter-mile down Broadway vying for roles with the road company. In November, the first road production opened in Boston, with subsequent productions opening elsewhere in the U.S., Japan, Europe and Australia.

Now, Rent brings its youthful fervor to Madison. Frank Productions engineered the eight-performance, six-night stand at the Civic Center, having worked for more than a year to bring the show here.

Says Fred Frank, president of Frank Productions: “What really entices [the road company] to play Madison is the UW campus.” Frank notes that other Broadway imports have done very well in this market and the magnitude of the show’s success made Rent a natural choice for Madison. He adds that Rent has played few markets as small as Madison. “This is a big show for Madison,” says Frank. “It is still a show that is very hot on Broadway and a hot ticket.”

The story concerns the lives of a motley band of East Villagers, revolving around Mark Cohen — a filmmaker and video artist and the play’s narrator — and his roommate Roger Davis, a musician who is HIV-postitive. They live in an industrial loft in what was once a music-publishing factory. There’s Mimi Marquez, a dancer with AIDS and a drug problem who lives above them. And Benny Coffin, their landlord, who owns an adjacent lot as well. He plans to build a multimedia studio on the property. Tom Collins is an HIV-positive computer programmer. He falls for Angel Shunard, a transvestite street drummer who is also HIV-positive. Finally, there is a lesbian couple — Maureen Johnson, a performance artist (and Mark’s ex-girlfriend), and Joanne Jefferson, a public interest lawyer.

The show is unavoidably contemporary, with its references to e-mail and IMAX, its HIV-positive characters, and gay and lesbian lovers. Parental guidance is suggested. Rent is not recommended for children under 13.