Product Description
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Set in New York City's gritty East Village, the revolutionary
rock opera RENT tells the story of a group of bohemians
struggling to live and pay their rent. "Measuring their lives in
love," these starving artists strive for success and acceptance
while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness and the AIDS
epidemic. RENT is based on Jonathan Larson's Pulitzer and Tony
Award winning musical, one of the longest running shows on
Broadway. The raw and riveting musical stars Rosario Dawson, Taye
Diggs, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Jesse L. Martin, Idina Menzel,
Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp and Tracie Thoms and is directed by
Chris Columbus.
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Rent, the show that in 1996 gave voice to a Broadway generation,
has finally become an energetic, passionate, and touching movie
musical. Based loosely on Puccini's La Bohème, it focuses on the
year in the life of a group of friends in New York's East
Village--"bohemians" who live carefree lives of art, music, sex,
and drugs. Well, carefree until Mark, an aspiring filmmaker
(Anthony Rapp), and Roger, an aspiring songwriter (Adam Pascal),
find out they owe a year's rent to Benny (Taye Diggs), a former
friend who had promised them free residence when he married the
landlord's daughter. Roger has also attracted the attention of
his downstairs neighbor, Mimi (Rosario Dawson), while Mark's
former girlfriend, Maureen (Idina Menzel), has found a new
romance in a lawyer named Joanne (Tracie Thoms). Philosophy
professor Tom (Jesse L. Martin) finds his soul mate in drag queen
Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia). But because this is the
late-'80s, the threat of AIDS is always present. The remarkable
thing about Rent the movie is that nearly 10 years after the show
debuted on Broadway, six of the eight principals return in the
roles they originated. They're a bit older than would be ideal
for their characters, but they do have the advantage of having
learned the show directly from creator Jonathan Larson (who died
of an aortic aneurysm while the show was in previews), plus they
started young--we're not exactly talking Sarah Brightman and
Michael Crawford here. Alongside a polished performance like
Rapp's--sometimes observer-commentator, sometimes participant in
two of the score's showstoppers, "The Tango Maureen" and "La Vie
Boheme"--the two new additions (Thoms in place of Fredi Walker,
Dawson in place of the edgier Daphne Rubin-Vega) slip comfortably
into the ensemble; the pivotal Dawson makes a seductive case as
Mimi when she tempts Roger in the mesmerizing "Light My Candle"
or burns up the stage of the Catscratch Club in "Out Tonight."
Moviegoers who have an aversion to people who break into song
while walking down the street probably won't have their minds
changed by Rent (even if they are singing rock songs), and the
gritty subject matter and lack of big-name stars make it unlikely
to cross over to general audiences the way Chicago did. But fans
of musicals should find "Seasons of Love" as stirring as ever,
and the show's passionate admirers--the "Rentheads"--probably
couldn't have wished for a more sympathetic director than Rent
fan Chris Columbus, or a more faithful representation of the show
they love. --David Horiuchi