Look, I just want to be clear -- I KNOW many many people have an intense love and identification with this show and my post was not in any way trying to discourage that. I was simply trying to communicate the impression that I and many people that I knew at the time (who were living the lives depicted on the stage) had of the show when it was downtown. We knew that Larson didn't write this show for us and that's fine and was his right as an artist. It's a show that allows suburban kids to spend a couple of hours with (a safe version of) characters and situations they've likely never encountered before in their lives and that it resonates so strongly with so many proves that Larson got a lot of things right. It taps into a transgressive, rebellious, anarchic feeling that many teenagers and 20-somethings have to want to challenge authority and not conform with the mundane everyday society that they know and to change the world --THAT'S why the show is still running nine years later.
Perhaps it is unfair of me to wish that Larson had spent more time in the neighborhood during the time that he immortalized in the show. So many I knew at the time (including some of the squattors) were trying to change the world and challenge authority, through art and political action, who put their lives on the line with ACT-UP and Queer Nation and other groups, in an effort to save themselves and the people that they loved (I also participated in several demonstrations, incidentally). Despite formidable resistance from the government and police and much of the media and public at-large, ACT-UP did succeed in changing the FDA's pharmaceutical protocols which had held up promising drugs from making it to the general public sometimes for years at a time, making it possible for the life saving and sustaining AIDS cocktails to make it to the market YEARS earlier than they would have under the old status quo, saving countless thousands of lives in the process (I have friends who are STILL with us, who were on their deathbeds in the mid-90s, but were able to get out of those beds and carry on with their lives because of the AIDS cocktail).
The activism in the streets that was an integral part of life in the East Village in the 80s and 90s is nowhere to be seen in "Rent" and would have added incalculable dimension to the story had Larson been more tapped into the real scene occurring at the time -- and it would have made it into a much more dynamic and powerful show. It's lost opportunities like that that led so many in the neighborhood (many of whom were artists and musicians themselves) to reject the show.
At that time, the East Village wasn't made up of a bunch of "whining" (to use a term I've seen a couple of times in this thread), non-rent-paying, spoiled brats (there were a few and they were ignored), the general mood was not of a bunch of people partying until they died of AIDS, but the REAL ethos at that time was of determined, pro-active, dynamic, intensely political people, gay and straight who were going to make art that made an impact on the world and were willing to put their bodies on the line to change a corrupt, noncompassionate system that didn't care if they lived or died (eg, several ACT-UP members chained themselves together and closed the Lincoln Tunnel for several hours; others infiltrated the New York Stock Exchange and prevented trading from occurring for a couple of hours; some criticized those actions at the time, but the eventual upshot was, the group was eventually noticed, taken seriously, out of fear if nothing else, and the FDA DID change their protocols in response, saving lives).
I just point these things out as examples of what several in the neighborhood at the time, found missing from the show. Larsen didn't HAVE to include any of it, but had he done so, I think the show would be much stronger.
Look, more than me or anyone else, I'm sure Jonathan Larson himself is looking down from heaven frustrated, wishing he had had the time to finish his show. He ran out of time and that's a crime. We'll never know what his ultimate vision of "Rent" was going to be (I know he was revising, rewriting and editing up till the moment he died) or what else he would have brought to the musical theatre had he lived. The show that's on stage at the Nederlander has many fine moments, but, to me, just as many flaws. But, it's obviously connected on a deep and profound level with millions around the world and that alone is a tremendous legacy for a gifted talent that died too young.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 4/18/05 at 11:25 PM
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