by Joanne Milani
Tampa Tribune
April 3, 1998

They are black, white, Hispanic and Asian. They are gay and straight. One is a transvestite. Some are healthy, and others have AIDS.

But in 'Rent', the Benetton-generation musical that arrives Wednesday at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, all the characters are bound together by love, tolerance and poverty.

"It's about love, loss and acceptance,'' says Kirk McDonald, 24, who plays the key role of filmmaker Mark Cohen.

"The message is to live every day to its fullest,'' he says.

That has special resonance because the rock opera's creator, 35-year-old Jonathan Larson, died of an aortic aneurysm in 1996. The show he had labored 10 years to forge was just about to take the world by storm.

Never mind Rodgers and Hammerstein melodies.

Larson had his ear firmly glued to the boom box. He used rock, rap, R&B, jazz, hip-hop and pop ballads to tell a story of multiethnic Generation Xers crowding together for survival in a freezing East Village loft.

His scenario, which is loosely tied to the plot of Giacomo Puccini's grand opera 'La Boheme', goes head to head with the 1980s Reaganized establishment and its creed of greed.

Ironically, show biz movers and shakers welcomed 'Rent'.  After all, Broadway, which had been sinking with overstuffed revivals, was long due for a youthquake musical and the MTV audiences it would attract.

'Rent' copped the Pulitzer Prize for drama as well as Tonys for best musical, best book and best score. As far as being welcomed by audiences, 'Rent' remains one of the hottest tickets on the Great White Way.

"The 80-year-olds come to the show as well as 9-year-olds,'' says Julia Santana, who plays heroin- addicted exotic dancer Mimi Marquez.

At "around 26", Santana is the average age of the cast as a whole. In fact, she has a lot in common with the 20-something 'Rent' characters, who include a songwriter, a performance artist and a computer-age philosopher.

A graduate of Manhattan's School for the Performing Arts, the school memorialized in the movie 'Fame', Santana headlined at New York clubs such as the Palladium and Roseland before joining the 'Rent' cast in June.

"I have a rock type of voice,'' says Santana, who grew up in Manhattan with her visual artist parents.

Her ultimate ambition is "to step up to the podium and accept my Grammy,'' she says.

McDonald, the son of a judge and a schoolteacher, is an Orlando native. The red-haired performer, whose character of Cohen is a stand-in for Larson himself, cut his theatrical teeth at the Orlando Opera Company and in productions at the Orlando Civic Center.

When he was 6, he saw 'Annie' and was stagestruck.

"I prayed that they would change 'Annie' to 'Andy' so I could take over the part,'' says McDonald, who expects his parents to attend the performances in Tampa.

Both McDonald and Santana are emphatic about the message Larson wanted to convey.

"Larson is saying, 'Love as much as you possibly can, because you are on borrowed time,' '' says McDonald.