The 2008 Stage Version Of Rent Shows Why This Gut-Wrenching Musical Has Endured For So Long

It's interesting to me how a large amount of art can be dubbed both timely to the specific period it premiered in and timeless in the types of emotions and characters it grapples with. Rent, a Broadway musical penned by Jonathan Larson, is very much one such production, with its story chronicling the experiences of eight adults in their early twenties grappling with financial insecurity and the AIDS crisis being very much something that resonated powerfully with audiences in the mid-1990's. For decades at that point, the AIDS crisis had ravaged the LGBTQA community and instead of creating more empathy for members of this community, individuals like former President Ronald Reagan only made those suffering from AIDS and the LGBTQA community itself even more of a pariah in American society than it already was. 

American pop culture was typically wary of touching upon the topic of AIDS and HIV, but there were exceptions to this distressing phenomenon that was tantamount to erasing the millions suffering across the planet. The 1993 movie Philadelphia was one of the more high-profile examples of a piece of art that centered its entire plot upon AIDS and following in its footsteps was Rent, which went even further in making its entire premise about following a year in the life of eight different people who either have AIDS or are close friends with people who do. Interestingly, the most prominent individual (though far from the only one) in the plot to suffer from AIDS is a heterosexual man, a refutation of inaccurate standard pop culture depictions of AIDS as something only gay individuals could get.

That's far from the only place Rent manages to subvert the norms, as a more racially diverse cast that proves to be accurate to actual racial demographics of New York City and a heavy presence of women in the program also manage to break from typical American storytelling that puts a greater emphasis on cis-gendered heterosexual white men. Real life, and the plethora of diversity that comes with it, is here for everyone to see in Rent. Just as it doesn't shy away from centering itself on people suffering from AIDS, Rent also fails to eschew a more realistic depiction of the wider spectrum of ethnicities and genders found in  New York City.

There's a similar dose of reality in the way it presents the individuals struggles its main characters endure, whether it's racially motivated aggression from police officers against African-American characters to passerby's dismissing the more sexually unorthodox traits of the characters as facets of their personalities that make them "freaks" or even just the crushing financial pressure they face in order to keep the lights on. Rent feels like a precursor to fellow impactful Broadway musical Avenue Q in the way it accurately depicts the adult world as an unglamorous place where immense struggles are plentiful and you're far from the only one feeling a pervasive lack of fulfillment in your weary soul. 

All of these realistic plot points are accompanied by a massive amount of musical numbers, with conventionally spoken dialogue being minimal in Rent. The musical numbers range widely in terms of their tone, with a tune like the memorable La Vie Boheme being an affirmative ode to the various traits that make the ensemble cast unique as a way to counterbalance the anger such traits garner from more intolerant members of the world. It also gets bonus points from me for name-dropping Akira Kurosawa! On the other hand, Rent can also drop these devastatingly powerful songs that put the existence of these characters into perspective. The recurring I Should Tell You is one great example of this, as the characters of Mimi and Roger try to tell the other about the individual personal problems they struggle with.

It's an amazing track that combines their pasts and all the torment found there with a promising present that could lead to a more hopeful future. And then there's Season Of Love, the most famous track from the entire musical by far. This is where the recurring theme of "Putting your life into a greater sense of perspective" that is found these more dramatic songs in Rent really comes to the forefront, as the cast assembles to sing about how many hours can be found in a year and ask themselves, the other characters and the audience itself how they measure that specific span of time. It's the best kind of Broadway musical song, the kind that makes you think, well up with tears and manages to get a song stuck in your head all at once.  Oh, and it transports any viewer into the mindset of someone struggling with a life-threatening disease like AIDS.

When a human being is struck with something like AIDS, your mortality gets reinforced, the very concept of you vanishing from this Earth gets put into your mind like never before. The finite time we all have on this Earth suddenly goes from becoming a concept you understand in the abstract and something you grasp concretely. Transporting the recognition of their own mortality and limited time on this Earth into one song is a gigantic task, but it's one Jonathan Larson's lyrics are more than up for and excel in doing with the incredibly powerful tune Seasons Of Love. There's plenty of emotionally absorbing musical numbers in Rent but only this particular track manages to really encapsulate its entire spirit so sufficiently.

All of the songs are handled by an impressive ensemble cast that includes Idina Menzel (reprising her role from the original run of this show) and future Hamilton star Renee Elise Goldsberry, so just from those two alone you know you're gonna get some tremendously powerful vocals. These two and the rest of the cast were assembled for a 2008 run of the show, the particular iteration of the program I watched  for this review. The filmed version of this version of Rent is super well-handled, particularly in the editing between camera angles that only reinforce the underlying themes of the songs and dialogue instead of coming off as an overly frivolous visual distraction from then.

Rent very much qualifies as one of the brightest examples of a piece of art that manages to be both timely to the era in which it was conceived and as something that can still resonate decades later. Twenty-one years after its Broadway premiere, Rent manages to be a window into the struggle of a disenfranchised population managing to still sing, love and endure even after they leave this Earth against terrifying diseases and rampant cruelty. We get limited amounts of time on this Earth and I'm extremely grateful that the late great Jonathan Larson a good chunk of his existence working on something as meaningful and riveting as Rent, a musical that has been transfixing audiences for decades now and will continue to do so for decades to come.