by J.H. Johnson
Dallas Voice
November 12, 1999

The celebrated show withstood a lawsuit in which a dramaturg tried to claim credit for shaping and co-authoring the show, after Larson was no longer alive to defend his authorship. The show also endured criticism from certain musical theater purists who found it loud, lewd, vulgar and undecipherable.

Rent's producer, Jeffrey Sellers, befriended Larson, nurtured the budding composer's talent and eventually co-produced the original production of Rent with the New York Theatre Workshop in Feb. 1996.

"I met Jonathan in 1990 when I saw his rock monologue that was about his own experience as an artist trying to make ends meet while reaching for his artistic goals," Sellers recalled. "I watched this monologue with the hair on my arms rising up from Jonathan's enormously powerful, visceral mood music, and I wrote him a letter the next day and said, 'You're amazing and I want to work with you.'"

This month, the Dallas Summer Musicals' Broadway Contemporary Series has brought the energetic touring production of Rent back to the Majestic Theatre for its third local run. The third time should be a charm as sound problems that plagued the play's first engagement have been solved, and those who hated the show surely will stay home. Their absence should allow those enchanted by Larson's hypnotically melodic score to savor the show without the distraction of blue-haired ladies and the like walking out in sanctimonious disgust throughout the first act.

"Rent is making musical theater attractive to a whole body of musical performers who would have never before considered working in the theater," Sellers said. "[Rent attracts] pop vocalists, rock singers, soul singers, gospel singers and actors who love drama but hate musicals such as Titanic and Ragtime. But more important than the performers that it's bringing in, is the audiences that Rent is reaching."

Rent's cult following - the amazingly-young, post-modern, black-clad, nose-ring-wearing crowd willing to stand in line for hours for bargain basement seats - may recognize that this life-affirming Generation X anthem has enduring qualities that Larson himself, alas, did not possess. Many of the haunting hard-rock lyrics actually seem, in hindsight, to foreshadow Larson's own sudden demise - none more so than the haunting refrain, "No day but today."

"Jonathan seems to take full account of what it means to live, what it means to live each day to the fullest and what it means to die at a young age," Sellers said. "The grand, wicked, cruel irony is that Jonathan became like a character in his own play."

Rent frankly deals with less-than-perfect gay relationships, bisexuality and illicit drug use, not uncommon among struggling young artists up against the cruelties of America's art mecca. Rent's brazen honesty may be, in fact, the root of its success. This is not the New York of Miracle on 34th Street, but a current, more jaded, New York City, typified by a mayor whose greatest publically percieved concern is his media blitz attempt to close an art museum.

Ironically, it is the legit-voiced, drama-school-trained stage star-wannabes, who can sing the shit out of Company or even Ragtime, that are the most adamant detractors to a brilliant Rent score that demands rock riffs, rather than musical comedy crooning. Young performers now flocking to Rent auditions have more in common with grunge rockers than Broadway babes, and are better served by a background of belting in a rock band than playing Curly or Laurie in Oklahoma! Additionally, Larson's cast of characters embraces far more ethnically-diverse demographics than traditional Broadway fair.

"Rent takes it for granted, though," pointed out Sellers. "Rent absolutely reflects our ethnic diversity, and yet makes no statement about it. That's what makes it so refreshing."

Some Rent criticism is coming from gay musical comedy enthusiasts, who find the hard edges of the show just a little too rough. Rent may not be the right show for gays and lesbians to take their parents or even their nephews and nieces to see. But then again, 20 years ago, A Chorus Line shocked patrons at the first mention of plastic surgery to enhance one's employability ("Tits and Ass").

At the time, the average "enlightened" audience did more than a little squirming upon hearing the heart-wrenching description of a shy gay male dancer's introduction to professional drag. Like Rent, however, A Chorus Line went on to win the Tony and the Pulitzer.

"I think Rent can have an enormously beneficial and positive effect on gay teens and their sense of being a part of a larger community," Sellers said. "Being able to be who they are and celebrate who they are, in the context of a community - not just in a ghetto, not in a world where everybody's gay, but in a community that can celebrate gay people, straight people, cross-gendered people, black people, white people, Hispanic people, Asian people."

"Speaking as a gay man, as well as a producer, one of the things that I have been most heartened by is the way that young gay teens and twenty-somethings -" Sellers, 35, hesitated briefly, then strongly stated, "I believe that Rent actually improves their self-esteem, if it needs improving."

Bottom line? As long as the Broadway and touring productions draw ticket buyers, bad-mouthing the Rent phenomenon, for whatever reason, results in little more than a misguided shot in the foot for the future success of musical theater. Rent may not be Rogers and Hammerstein, but thank God, it's "kewl."