by Sid Smith, Alan G. Artner,
Gret Kot, John Von Rhein, Howard
Reich & Richard Christiansen
Chicago Tribune
September 12, 1999

"Rent" is a show that turns Broadway upside down. The Great White Way traditionally celebrates middlebrow characters and mainstream tastes, but here is a musical about the anti-middle class, fashionably chic in its Bohemian characters suffering from poverty, drug addiction, AIDS and a very '90s idealism. The rock score blasts from the microphoned singers with a vengeance, and the see-through, Brechtian platform staging harkens back to "The Threepenny Opera." It is decidedly anti-Broadway in its performance art trappings. But the show's popularity, as well as some criticism leveled against it, stems partly from the old-fashioned sentiments in its story, one in which the downtrodden find love and hope despite the uncaring society around them. This return visit features the second national touring company, including a Latin band member, Christian Mena, as Roger, the rocker with AIDS.