Following the initial report by The New York Times, Producers Jeffrey Seller, Kevin McCollum, and Allan S.
Gordon have announced that the landmark Broadway musical Rent will close at the
Nederlander Theatre after the evening performance on Sunday, June 1, 2008,
after playing 5,012 performances and 16 previews. Rent is the seventh longest running show in
Broadway history and has grossed over $280 million during its Broadway run.
Rent,
written by Jonathan Larson and directed by Michael Greif, began
Broadway previews on April 16, 1996 and officially opened at Broadway's
Nederlander Theatre, on April 29, 1996 following a history making, sold out,
extended limited engagement at off-Broadway's New York Theatre Workshop. The
musical went on to win countless musical theatre awards, including the Tony
Award, as well as the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
Rent's sadly
ironic tragedy of course, is that its young creator, Jonathan Larson, never got
to see his show's success, having died of an aortic aneurysm (possibly as a
result of Marfan Syndrome) early morning January 25 after the show's final
dress rehearsal the previous evening.
Both the show's resounding critical and audience response and its
creator's tragic, untimely death attracted major media coverage.
Rent focuses on
the life, love and trials of roommates Roger Davis, a struggling musician who's
HIV+ hoping to write one last meaningful song before he dies, and Mark Cohen, a
filmmaker and video artist. Roger meets and falls in love with Mimi Marquez, a
club dancer with AIDS and a drug problem. The many friends and "family" members
of Rent include iconic musical theatre characters like the loving drag-queen
Angel, and his lover Tom Collins, an HIV+ computer genius. Plus the love-tango with Mark's ex-girlfriend
(and rebellious performance artisit) Maureen Johnson and her new lover, the hard-nosed
lawyer Joanne. This Bohemian family –
who live for each moment of the day – battle Benjamin Coffin III, landlord and
former-friend Mark and Roger's building, who wants to misplace penniless
artists and homeless to construct a multimedia studio and destroying the East Village
community.
The show was also responsible for helping to usher in a
number of important changes to Broadway and its marketing, including the use of
simpler, more contemporary advertising and logo design; the rebirth of 41
Street's Nederlander Theatre; a shop and windows at Bloomingdales that featured
clothing inspired by the show and its costumes; the institution of same day
front row seats priced at $20; and the appeal to and attraction of teen and
college-age audiences.
As the first show to sell same day orchestra seats for
$20,
Rent attracted a huge number of repeat visitors who came to be known as Rentheads. Many fans saw the show ten,
twenty, or thirty times, and some as many as a hundred or more.
The original cast of Rent included Taye Diggs, Idina Menzel,
Daphne Rubin-Vega, Jesse L. Martin, Anthony Rapp, Wilson Jermaine Heredia and Adam Pascal.
