by Jennifer Meacham-Dirks
January 5, 2000
Seattletmes.comk

"Rent," in a return Seattle engagement, has won both a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize. The musical is credited with bringing a hipper, younger audience back to Broadway.

"Rent," the musical that returned the hip factor to Broadway, comes back to Seattle for one week in January.

The mega-award-winning rock musical phenomenon is a maze of stories gleaned from New York's Lower East Side.

There's Mark, a filmmaker and the show's narrator, who loses his girlfriend to a lesbian lover, comforts a just-mugged friend and rescues a homeless woman from the nightsticks of neighborhood cops.

There's his roommate Roger, a musician, who loses his girlfriend to suicide, is HIV positive and falls in love with an S&M dancer.

There's Angel, a street musician, intermittent transvestite and friend to the downtrodden. From drugs to riots to death, this show covers the hot issues in a way no other show has.

"It's hip," says Lora Marini Baker of SFX Theatrical Group, which coordinates Paramount's Broadway shows. "Teenagers love it, 20-somethings love it, 30-somethings love it. But there are plenty of traditional theatergoers who enjoy it as well." "Rent" has drawn a hipper, younger crowd back to Broadway, which is said to have long neglected that demographic. After winning both a Tony Award and a Pulitzer Prize, "Rent" is also credited with helping to inject new creative energy into national Broadway tours.

"Rent" originally played Seattle in 1998, selling out its 10-week run at the Moore Theatre. Now it is scheduled for a one-week encore at Seattle's larger, 2,800-seat Paramount Theatre. In a "Rent" tradition, the first two rows are $20 each performance. The tradition is in memory of show creator Jonathan Larson, who died on the eve of the show's first public performance and whose dream was to create musical theater for all.

The $20 tickets are sold two hours before each show and are available to anyone, cash only (limit two tickets per person).

"The people who know about it line up very early in the morning to be able to buy their tickets two hours before the show starts," says Baker. "I suspect we'll have a few people camping out."