by William Carltonl
News@Sentinel
September 19, 2000

A generation ago, the moon was in the seventh house, Jupiter aligned with Mars, peace guided the planet, and love steered the stars toward a radical musical on Broadway called "Hair."

The "tribal love-rock" romp introduced a new family unit to America. Ward and June Cleaver were nowhere in sight. Over 30 couldn't be trusted, man, not in the Age of Aquarius. The hippie kids in "Hair" formed their own family and supported each other's long-haired, free-loving, anti-establishment lifestyles.

The Bohemian rhapsody was reminiscent of a much earlier work, Puccini's "La Boheme" opera classic about death and debauchery among a group of starving artists in 19th-century Paris.

Now, Gen X offspring are picking up where "Hair" and "La Boheme" left off, this time in the musical "Rent." The national tour stops for five performances Sept. 22-24 at the Embassy Theatre.

Critics gushed over it as the most brilliant and original musical Broadway has seen since the 1950s. "Rent" won the Tony Award in 1996 for Best Musical, and a Pulitzer Prize for its ill-fated creator, Jonathan Larson. He died of an aortic aneurysm the night before the Broadway previews began, just 35 years old.

"Rent" dwells on the hopes, dreams, loves and deaths of young artists. They socialize in a loft on Manhattan's seedy East Village, and battle greedy landlords trying to evict them. The squatters and their circle include Mark, a struggling filmmaker who narrates the show; his roommate, Roger, a musician who is HIV positive; Mimi, a sadomasochistic dancer who lives below Mark and Roger; Angel, a street musician; Maureen, a performance artist who dumped Mark for a gay Harvard Law School grad named Joanne; and Tom, a professor who falls for Angel.

In "La Boheme," the specter of death haunts the artists' lives in the form of tuberculosis slowly choking the life out of Mimi and killing her future with Rodolfo, a neighbor with whom she falls in love.

In "Hair," the Vietnam War is the vulture. In "Rent," the generational plague is AIDS, infecting squatters with the abrupt realization that though they are young, their days are numbered and passing fast. They must live each day to the max.

The last song the cast sings, "No Day But Today," sums up the central theme of "Rent," says Jacqueline B. Arnold, who plays Joanne. "The day can be hopeful or hopeless, the choice is yours," she says. "The characters in `Rent' may be very different in terms of what we do and how we live, but we are all human beings who need love, respect and friendship. We all need each other to survive."

Arnold, 26, is a brassy, upfront actress from Los Angeles whose credits include a revival of "Hair."

"Yes, I was in that," she says, laughing. "It was inevitable. I was a hippie kid. Everything comes full circle."

"Rent" throws the characters in your face the same way "Hair" did, she says. "It forces the audience to go to the same emotional extremes we do on stage. My character loves Maureen because she's everything Joanne isn't — super-artistic, not grounded, quirky, whimsical, free-spirited, silly, always laughing. It's hard emotionally for Joanne to go there."

"Rent" is something most other Broadway shows are not — vastly appealing to young people. It's the answered prayer for theater producers faced with dwindling audiences as the older generation dies off.

Arnold, a member of that younger generation herself, says she knows why "Rent" has become a cult favorite among her peers in and out of the theater world:

"The people in 'Rent' are a family unit; they care about each other, black and white, straight and gay. They're people who need people. That's more important in life than money or social status. They find more solace and support among street people. They won't judge them. Their parents will."