Rent Coming to Bass Concert Hall

Pearl Jam's announcement as one of the headliners of this year's Austin City Limits festival (not to mention a quick glance at the recently-released Lollapalooza lineup) confirms one of our long-held suspicions: the 90s nostalgia boom is in full swing. But if alternative rock was never your thing, fret not—there are other opportunities to indulge a little bit of sentimentality. For instance, have you heard that Rent is coming to town?

Fifteen years after the quintessential 90s musical made its debut at the New York Theatre Workshop and over a decade since it won the Pulitzer and big stack of Tony Awards for its portrayal of artistic types living in America at the end of the millennium, Rent is coming to Bass Concert Hall, thanks to Broadway Across America. Originally conceived as a way to "bring Musical theater to the MTV generation", Rent exists as both a product of and a comment on the decade in which it's set.

Now that the generation it was intended to appeal to is busy spawning generations of their own, Rent may come off as more than a little dated, but given the aforementioned 90s revival trend (did we mention Letters To Cleo are coming to town?), that might actually help keep it relevant - at least more so than Chris Columbus' film version, anyway. If you want to learn how it plays in the current context, the show runs May 12-17.

[Tickets]

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By dansolomon in Arts & Entertainment on April 24, 2009 2:35 PM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

seth

I'll revive an old phrase I used to mutter in the nineties...

Fuck Broadway. Fuck new york while you're at it.

Seth

causal observer

Is Rent even culturally relevant anymore?

Donatella

Of course it is.

People are still being infected with HIV, people are still gay, people steal use drugs, etc.

dansolomon

I don't know, really. I suspect it's not relevant to contemporary culture because it's such a product of its time. I think if you go in expecting that it's going to have something to say about 2009 America, you're very likely to find it irrelevant. But if you go in looking for some commentary on the 90s - especially since they're being pushed back into the consciousness now more than ever - it may have some life left to it. Bret Easton Ellis novels are effective today because they reflect their times, and offer a comment on the 80s. I haven't seen Rent in ages, but I'd like to think that maybe it can work in the same way for its own era.

--d