This entry is basi­cally a response to a post a friend made about their reac­tion to see­ing RENT for the first time on Broad­way, so make sure to read that post first, oth­er­wise what fol­lows won't make much sense. I would have posted this as a com­ment on her orig­i­nal entry, but LJ got angry with me. Oh well. Another rea­son to hate LiveJournal…

Read the orig­i­nal entry first…

Okie, you had to know I'd say some­thing about this. While I'll admit that I'm not unbi­ased about the show in the least, I'm not going to try and defend its flaws but per­haps I can add some clar­ity to some of the points you raised about the show. You may get more back­ground and trivia than you expected with this post, but that's what I'm here for.

Mau­reen: I've never been a big fan of hers, either. I appre­ci­ate that her char­ac­ter is very pas­sion­nate about her "art", but hon­estly, the "Over The Moon" sequence is the only part of the show that makes me want to throw some­thing, as it does tend to brow­beat the audi­ence after a while. Okay, we get it. You're com­mit­ted to your art. Can we move on now? When­ever I see the show, I'm very glad that the first act ends after that sec­tion so I can get a breather. But she does serve as a foil and weak­ness for Mark, which is some­thing he needs. And as silly as her rela­tion­ship with Joanne is, it's based on a real rela­tion­ship between friends of Jonathan Lar­son, and per­haps it's a bit embell­ished because of some slight bit­ter­ness he had a girl­friend leave him for another woman. I per­son­ally like some of the ban­ter between the two, par­tic­u­larly "Take Me Or Leave Me" (and par­tic­u­larly that sequence in the film) but many of the "Are We Okay?" seg­ments (the scream­ing matches) are a bit too much, I'll agree.

AIDS: While the song from Team Amer­ica is hilar­i­ous, it also very broadly gen­er­al­izes the prob­lem. For simplicity's sake, here are the char­ac­ters that have AIDS, and where it's revealed in the show.

Prin­ci­pals:

• Angel — "There's a 'life sup­port' meet­ing at 9:30 / Yes, this body pro­vides a com­fort­able home / For the acquired immune defi­ciency syn­drome" ("You Okay Honey?")
• Collins — "As does mine / [Angel] We'll get along fine" ("You Okay Honey?")
• Roger — "[Mark] Close on Roger / His girl­friend April / Left a note say­ing, 'We've got AIDS' / Before slit­ting her wrists in the bath­room" ("Tune Up #3")
• Mimi — "AZT break / [Roger] You? / [Mimi] Me. You? / [Roger] Mimi!" ("La Vie Boheme")

Periph­eral characters:

• April — Roger's ex-girilfriend, killed her­self after she found out she had AIDS and gave it to Roger. This is actu­ally made a bit more appar­ent in the film via a flash­back sequence dur­ing "One Song Glory" but inter­est­ingly enough, the film inti­mates that she either dies from the dis­ease itself or from a drug over­dose, pre­sum­ably because the film is rated PG-13 and prob­a­bly couldn't show or talk about her com­mit­ting sui­cide, which is why Mark's above line from "Tune Up #3" is cut from the film.
• Paul, Gor­don, Ali, Pam, Sue — All mem­bers of the Life Sup­port group, and all named for friends of Jonathan Lar­son that died of AIDS dur­ing RENT's cre­ation. In fact, the fol­low­ing note is in the libretto for the start of "Life Sup­port": Note: The names of the sup­port group mem­bers should change every night and should honor actual friends of the com­pany who have died of AIDS. Jonathan was also involved with a local AIDS sup­port group called Friends In Deed.

Now, yes, that's ten total char­ac­ters, whether on-stage or men­tioned, that have AIDS. And yes, it is dif­fi­cult to tell from the hints in the show exactly who has AIDS if you're not pay­ing very, very close atten­tion to the words. In fact, I didn't have it down until I lis­tened to the show record­ing at least a cou­ple of times. But the sad truth of the mat­ter is that the show was con­ceived of and writ­ten — and also takes place — dur­ing the height of the AIDS cri­sis in the late 1980's. And if you didn't live through it or don't know much about it, there's really no way to under­stand just how bad and wide­spread the epi­demic was, and to a degree, still is.

Roger and Mimi: Yeah, he screws up quite a bit with her, even though he knows he doesn't have a whole lot of time left. He's resis­tant because while he would like noth­ing more than to just love Mimi, he's still very over­come with his grief about los­ing April, and the even­tu­al­ity of that hap­pen­ing again with Mimi is too much for him to han­dle. Why does he become jeal­ous of Benny? Because guys are like that, AIDS or not. Even well-adjusted peo­ple like myself have to deal with jeal­ousy. Be that as it may, yeah, you just want to smack Roger when he con­sis­tently pushes Mimi away from him. "Come on, you idiot, trea­sure what you have now!" He finally under­stands it in the end, thank goodness.

Benny: Yes, he most def­i­nitely mar­ried for money and secu­rity, and that's why you never see Ali­son (or "Muffy," as she's referred to) on-stage. You never see her in the film, either. That's also why he doesn't seem to care at all that Angel killed Alison's dog. He used his mar­riage as a way to move out of his lifestyle and ele­vate him­self. I don't think that Mark and Roger are bit­ter or angry about his wealth (per­haps they're a bit jeal­ous), but moreso about the fact that he gave them his word and then decided to go back on it. They have no prob­lem with Benny mak­ing the pipe dream a real­ity, but they don't under­stand why he has to stomp on all of them to do it. Benny hav­ing means and oppor­tu­nity to cre­ate the stu­dio doesn't make him a sell­out — boot­strap­ping the down­trod­den and in doing so, aban­don­ing his roots and friends, does.

Money: Yes, Mark would like to have the money to make his films, and that's why he takes the job with Buz­zline, but that doesn't last long because the job ties him down and makes him feel worth­less, because he has noth­ing invested in the work. Mark, Roger and Mau­reen don't have any­thing against money per se, but they're ide­al­ists, and they want to make their "art" on their own terms. In doing so, they make life a lot harder on them­selves. They're not say­ing that's what's "right"; they're say­ing that's what they do.

In the end, the show isn't about any­one hav­ing a dis­dain for wealth or suc­cess or any­thing else. It's about liv­ing every moment as if it were your last, mak­ing your words, your art, your love count because it may be the only chance you've got. That point is made all the more res­o­nant because on the night of the final dress rehearsal just before RENT's off-Broadway pre­miere, Jonathan Lar­son died of an aor­tic aneurism at 35 … an artist who, for over ten years, worked in a cof­fee shop and lived a very "Bohemian" lifestyle in a fourth-floor walkup while writ­ing and pro­duc­ing RENT, and he never even got to see his artis­tic vision fully real­ized. If that isn't the best exam­ple of life imi­tat­ing art, I don't know what is. The film makes many of these points more clear, and it would be my hope that you watch it before pass­ing judg­ment. You needn't be under 30 to appre­ci­ate the show. You just need to not be quite so cynical.

So there's my ten cents. Feel free to make change.