Set in New York City's gritty East Village, the revolutionary rock opera RENT tells the story of a group of bohemians struggling to live and pay their rent. "Measuring their lives in love," these starving artists strive for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness and the AIDS epidemic. RENT is Jonathan Larson's Pulitzer and Tony Award winning musical, one of the longest running shows on Broadway.
For passionate fans of
Rent--the popular Broadway rock musical that updated
La Boheme with electric guitars, steel drums, strippers, and drag queens--
Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway is a must-have.Written and composed by Jonathan Larson (who died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm just before the show premiered),
Rent follows an absurdly clean-cut gaggle of hipster artists who, after having been squatting in a run-down building for a year, are now being told they have to pay that rent by the building's owner, a former friend. At least, that's the plot point that launches everything; really, the musical is about modern romance, grappling with AIDS, and celebrating the creative spirit. This film documents the last performance of the Broadway production, which ran for 12 years. Though the aggressive camera moves and sometimes frenetic editing seem intended to make the film feel less stagebound, this
Rent first and foremost captures the stage experience. The production's raw set and self-conscious theatricality (which highfalutin' theater folk might call "Brechtian") creates genuine show-biz razzle-dazzle and helps distract from some of the cliches in the musical itself. There are no famous faces (the closest is Tracie Thoms, who played the same role, the lesbian lover of a performance artist, in the movie version), but the cast is solid and exuberant, throwing themselves wholeheartedly into the show's unapologetically sincere paeans to life and love.
--Bret Fetzer Stills from Rent: Filmed Live on Broadway (Click for larger image)
