by Jack Zink
Miami Sun-Sentinel
April 1, 1998

The history of the rock musical can be told in two words: Hair. Rent.

Rock 'n' roll has been a part of musical theater for nearly 40 years, at least since Bye Bye Birdie spoofed Elvis Presley back in 1960. But the Rock Musical as a species -- some would say beast -- has spent its entire history trying to get past the beachhead to conquer Broadway.

First Hair in 1968 and now Rent shed the conventions of modern theater, their success measured in part by their shock value. Both focus their spotlight on the heart of the counterculture. And in doing so, both transcend the stage, acquiring the status of cultural events. But Hair dated quickly; it remains to be seen whether Rent, which arrives Tuesday at the Jackie Gleason Theater, will survive its intense topicality.

In Rent's favor are Jonathan Larson's book, music and lyrics, a natural fusion of rock and theatrical tradition that no other rock musical has achieved. Although Rent breaks no new ground and is structurally simplistic, even messy in spots, that fusion garnered critical acclaim that eluded Hair and all the pretenders that followed.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's biblical concept album Jesus Christ, Superstar and musical fable Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat put rock 'n' roll on Broadway in vaudeville-style sketches. Earlier this decade, The Who's Tommy finally brought that pioneering rock opera (an oratorio, really) to the stage. Grease followed in the nostalgia-parody tracks of Bye Bye Birdie. Other examples abound, but none aside from Hair and Rent fully explore the potential cultural relationship between rock and musical theater.

Hair illustrated the sexual revolution, used nudity as a symbol of freedom, celebrated recreational drug use, voiced profanity, shouted its youthful rebellion in the Vietnam era as anti-war sentiment. In a sense, Hair synthesized the sexual, racial and political revolutions of its era. But it was seen as a theatrical anomaly, essentially a pop phenomenon.

To those iconoclasms of a generation ago, Rent adds interracial relations, drug addiction, transvestism, anarchy, gay/lesbian role models and the now-abiding horror of AIDS. It has as much capacity to shock as Hair once did; walkouts are common among older subscribers.

Rent, along with other shows this season, has prompted talk of a ratings system for Broadway, similar to those for movies and television. In its online edition last month, theater's national magazine Playbill asked, "How many moms and dads offer Rent as a birthday present to teens, only to discover that Jonathan Larson's musical has profanity, drug use, cross dressing, gay themes and HIV?"

Yet unlike some of its predecessors, Rent uses those elements constructively. The show's status as art has been confirmed by the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award.

A tragic beginning

Now known as "Rentmania," the sensation began January 25, 1996. Larson, who once said, "I am the future of the American musical theater," died the night before that future was born.

Rent's first preview was held at the New York Theatre Workshop, a small off-Broadway theater. By the time it officially opened to critics a few weeks later, the buzz was already hot. Reviewers jumped on the discovery wagon. Larson's death from an aortic aneurysm, so near to his quest's fulfillment, added the weight of tragic legend to their reports.

Within hours after the papers hit the newsstands, tickets were nearly impossible to get.

Producer Jeffrey Seller by then was at work on a transfer to Broadway. Shortly before the April reopening at the Nederlander Theatre came the announcement of the Pulitzer Prize, perhaps theater's highest cultural honor. In June, Broadway's Tony Award bestowed mainstream and commercial recognition. The New York production of Rent recently passed its second anniversary without yet playing to an empty seat.

Seller's theatrical relationship with Larson stretches back years, through an abandoned earlier musical called Superbia and grueling years of Rent rewrites. Meanwhile, Seller, 33, was booking mainstream shows uptown and around the country, from The Sisters Rosensweig to Crazy for You. But he, like Larson -- who was 36 when he died -- was concerned about the graying of the theater audience and looking for a way to attract younger generations.

"Jonathan told me years ago that 'nobody our age goes uptown to see those musicals. They aren't our stories, those aren't our characters, that's not our music. Why would we go? It doesn't speak to us,'" says Sellers.

"It was his professional goal to change that, to reverse that trend and write a musical piece that spoke to his generation, in their language, with their music, with characters they knew, in a story they could relate to."

No matter that the story is borrowed from Giacomo Puccini's opera La boheme, which premiered in Italy on Feb. 1, 1896 -- 100 years to the week before Rent's off-Broadway opening. The similarities of structure and relationships anchor the narrative within the classical tradition, without diminishing its popular appeal.

Youth is served

Most theater wags predicted that Rent's rock nomenclature would wear out quickly on Broadway, as did The Who's Tommy in the early '90s. It hasn't. Nor has its success diminished on the road. In addition to the Broadway company, there are two tours in the United States (the other is in Detroit), one in Canada and another company due to open May 12 in London.

Seller conducted audience research on the Broadway show (before the holidays, to avoid getting results colored by seasonal tourist trade). He found that a whopping 55 percent of Rent's patrons were 35 or younger. For the musical theater, this is the equivalent of the earth moving.

The 24-35 age group accounts for 31 percent of sales. A surprising 18 percent is the 18-24 age group, and 6.2 percent are under 18, according to Seller's figures.

"If you look at the musical theater in terms of changing a little bit at a time as its audience gets older, The Who's Tommy was an example of a musical moving up there with the audience. It was a 1969 hit record," Seller says. "Rent is getting underneath that to the younger generation itself."

But is Rent turning off the older and more conservative audiences? Some, but not all, Seller says. That's partly why the show is making its South Florida premiere on South Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater. But it did earn $14.5 million in Boston, played to 96 percent capacity for 10 weeks in St. Paul, Minn., last summer and is going back there, to what Seller joyously calls "the heartland."

After its South Florida break-in next week, Rent will swing back next season to the more conservative Broward Center for the Performing Arts. It's part of the subscription lineup next Jan. 5-17.

"The Pulitzer Prize was a source of artistic satisfaction more than a business boon," he says. "Although I will say that it helped convince our audiences over 35 that this is a serious piece of art worth their time, even if it challenges them."

The percentage of young audiences in his survey gratified Seller, but he didn't know yet whether older crowds were actually buying that argument.

"I was curious to know whether it's worth it for me to use our publicity and advertising efforts to go after that audience. If we're not pleasing them, then don't bother.

"But we found out that Rent is either meeting or surpassing the expectations of 80 percent of those (older) audiences. They don't love it as unilaterally as young people, but enough of them do that it's worth it for me to cultivate that audience."

View from the stage

Andy Senor witnesses those reactions every night from the stage. Senor, 23, is a Miamian plucked from Florida International University's theater department last year to join the touring company opening Tuesday at the Gleason. He started in the ensemble last September in Southern California, and has since taken over the role of the drag queen Angel, one of the six major roles.

"The subscriber audiences are a little more difficult but the single-ticket sales are incredible and the audiences are great," Senor says.

"We get all ages, a lot of theater people and a lot who aren't. In Los Angeles we had tons of groupies who would come at least twice a week and I would hear them talk about going to see other shows like Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk and Ragtime. That was exciting to me, that these people who aren't coming from a theater background are touched by this medium and are going to see these other shows."

The young actor sees that as a distinct change from just a few years ago, when youth-oriented musicals were few and far between.

"The theater being done now is very relevant to our times, like Noise/Funk, Stomp and Tap Dogs have something behind them, and The Lion King's Broadway score is just amazing."

Senor echoes Larson when he says his heart is in musical theater, "but at the same time I can't do shows like Oklahoma, I just can't. That's not me."

"I don't feel it. I'll listen to the music but it's silly to me, I just can't do it. Rent is perfect because the lines are very blurry whether it's a concert or a show. Everything is apparent: The band is right there (onstage), the sound, the lights. I love the show, it's loud and it's great."

But that isn't all. His own character of Angel, the dying transvestite, is unconventional yet compassionate, which is representative of the entire story, he says.

"You think he's a woman throughout most of the play and he comes back in the end and he's really a guy. But you can't judge at that point. Jonathan Larson has put you exactly where he wanted to," Senor says.

"Angel is love, acceptance, understanding -- every good quality you could ever imagine, put into a drag queen. It's clever. You have no choice but to be compassionate with this relationship -- all the relationships. They're all real. In just one sentence, Rent is about living and loving and dying in the time of AIDS."