by Mal Vincent
Virginian-Pilot
October 10, 1999

PUCCINI MAY BE turning in his grave but, apparently, everyone else is lining up at the box office -- at least if the word from Broadway is accurate.

Go figure.

"Rent',' the musical arriving at Chrysler Hall Tuesday, has been hailed as "a hymn to the new generation'' and a "joyous and breathtaking musical.'' Yet, it's about a group of junkies, most of them HIV-positive and all of whom are struggling denizens of Greenwich Village. It doesn't quite sound like a laugh riot; in fact, its "hope'' quotient is questionable.

Based very loosely on Giacomo Puccini's opera "La Boheme,'' the hero is Roger (he was the poet Rodolfo in the opera), an HIV-positive rock musician who is numb from the suicide of his HIV-positive girlfriend. Mimi, a tubercular seamstress in the opera, has been recast as an HIV-positive junkie in love with Roger. They struggle to celebrate life in the shadow of drugs, poverty and death.

From the outset, "Rent,'' which has been credited with attracting a new, younger audience to Broadway, was steeped in more than its share of drama.

Jonathan Larson, its author, died of an aortic aneurysm the night before the show received its first preview performance at the off-Broadway New York Theater Workshop. He'd been to an emergency room twice the last week of his life, but his chest pains were dismissed as food poisoning; his friends thought he was merely suffering from pre-opening jitters. He never lived to see his play move to Broadway and win the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award (one of only four musicals to win both). Larson had quit his job as a waiter a month before his death. He had been working on the show, with its 31 songs, for seven years. He was 35.

His death may have sparked the show's His sister tearfully accepted the Tony.

"I will never forget the pathos of seeing Jonathan's mother and father at the opening night on Broadway,'' said John Korker, general manager for the Broadway production and the touring company arriving this week. "It was his dream.

"From the first, down in the Village, the show was a hit in its little theater. It was a curious sight to see homeless people sleeping on the stoop on the block while limos full of rich people pulled up to the theater. We kept saying we were going to Broadway -- and we did.''

But a question remains: Will this very New York show about junkies and transvestites play around the country?

"It's not a musical about AIDS and death,'' he said. "It's about a family of people and how they can stand together against the odds. They're not a blood family, but, then, there are all kinds of families. It's a coming-of-age play.''

The music, a mix of salsa, R&B, dance, pop and hard rock, is "structured to tell the story,'' Korker said. "Jonathan wanted it to speak in a different style than usual Broadway, but before this Broadway musicals were about falling chandeliers or helicopters. This is more personal.

And the differences from "La Boheme'' are many.

The garret in Paris is now the tenement apartment of Roger and Mark, an aspiring documentary filmmaker. (Marcello, a painter, lived with Rodolfo in the opera.) Musetta, Puccini's incorrigible flirt, is a sexy lesbian named Joanne. Colline, the philsopher, has given way to Tom Collins, an HIV-positive philosophy teacher who falls in love with a drag queen named Angel Schunard.

Instead of a script being burned in the first scene, posters from Roger's concerts are set ablaze. Nor does Mimi drop her key; instead, it is her stash of heroin.

And you can bet that the tragic ending of the opera has been changed. Maybe.

Clearly, this Broadway musical is not business as usual.