20 Years of RENT

By Patti Martinson
March 5, 2018

Last month I was thrilled to see that the 20th Anniversary Tour of RENT was coming into my town. Knowing productions like this don't come very often, I got tickets as soon as they were available.

While it has been 22 years since RENT opened on Broadway, this particular tour started in 2016.

Adapted from the opera La Boheme, RENT focuses on a group of young artists in New York's East Village, struggling to survive in the shadow of AIDS / HIV. Three of the characters are HIV positive, and are a mix of orientations: lesbian, bisexual, and straight, with heart of the group being Angel, an HIV-positive drag queen.

The sets, the actors, and the singing were all as wonderful as I had expected, with the musical numbers in particular being the standouts. In the back of my mind, however, I pondered the larger meaning and importance of RENT two decades later.

HIV / AIDS still exists, but it is not as much of a death sentence as much as it was in the time-frame of the musical's setting. Nowadays, it doesn't seem to be as prominent or generating headlines in the public consciousness, even though there is still no viable cure for the disease.

As I watched the characters come together, break up, and come together again over the course of the musical, I thought about how the relationships would be perceived now. Somebody being lesbian, gay, or bisexual isn't terribly remarkable, but it struck me that while enormous strides have been made, I still think Angel's relationship with Tom Collins is something that feels uncommon today. While I had seen RENT before, their relationship seems so much more powerful and meaningful to me today. I don't know whether it was this particular production or in the larger sense, but that was my big personal takeaway from this performance of RENT.

I also paid attention more to the homeless characters in the show, particularly to the homeless woman who attacks one of the characters after he tried to help her. This resonated with me more, as in my hometown, there is a real struggle to help the homeless, but still honor and respect their autonomy with respect to their own situation. So as well-meaning as this group is, given they are living in poverty as well, this tension stood out to me more, and the homeless were more or less part of the background.

As much as my eyes were on the production, I also looked at and pondered the audience, most of whom seemed to be on the older side. Whether that perception was actually true or not, I wondered about how people born at the time RENT premiered would feel about or think about the people, the characters, and their relationships. Would it have the same meaning to them as it would to people who lived through those particular times or saw the musical back then?

I am not sure. But one of the themes of RENT is "No Day But Today" and that message, I think, would cut across generations.

RENT — Wikipedia's page on the musical