by Jim Macnie
Providence Phoenix
June 4, 1998

After a couple of years on the front pages, the Rent phenomenon has subsided and we have a clearer opportunity to see if Jonathan Larson's ballyhooed ensemble piece is likely to change the way Broadway does business.  I see it as a sage anomaly rather than an effective instigator.   And I chuckle a bit when I think about the touring company bringing its clutch of heroic East Village outsiders -- queers, users, anarchists, et al. -- to a place that ushered Anne Bogart out of town for generating a kind of theatre that was brain-intensive rather than user-friendly.  Well, you don't get a Pulitzer without generating a few goose bumps, and if you haven't seen Larson's triumph, be aware that its humanist largess is just as demonstrative as any rhetoric of underclass combat.  The hipsterism and camaraderie it touts isn't without parallel to neighbors leaning over the clothes line in Tinytown, discussing the subject du jour.  And don't forget the catchiness (likely a large part of Bogart's crash).  You'll invariably go home singing the tunes; it's a pop music smorgasbord. Rent runs through the 14th at the Providence Performing Arts Center.