Legacy

America
May 11, 1996
By Thomas J. Carroll

The power of any work of art is in its telling of the truth. At its best moments, the American musical theater tradition has done that well. The grappling with racial prejudice in "South Pacific," for example, remains both effective and relevant, as does the biting critique of militarism in "Hair." The flaws of either of those shows, or of many another significant musical, notwithstanding, American musical theater has often become a teacher of our hearts, daring to tell us truths we have needed to know, or to know again or to know more deeply.

As I flew to New York at the end of January for Jonathan Larson's memorial service, I did not realize that he had left for us just such a legacy in his new rock opera, "Rent." When I had dinner with him a couple of summers ago at Manhattan's Ear Inn, Jonathan shared with me his enthusiasm over the progress of this new show he was writing. As he guided me around SoHo after our meal, he was giving me, I now realize, an introduction to many of the themes and issue that straggle toward resolution in "Rent."

The initial preview performance of "Rent" was scheduled for Friday, Jan. 26, at the New York Theater Workshop in Manhattan. Only a few hours after the final dress rehearsal ended on the 25th, Jonathan died at the age of 35 of an aortic aneurysm. A stunned and grieving company gathered that Friday evening to sing the score for the Larson family and many of Jon's friends. The memorial service for Jonathan at the Minetta Lane Theater on Feb. 3, even as it mourned his death, celebrated an artist's life.

Jonathan Larson pursued such a life, working year after year at a SoHo diner to make ends meet while he composed songs and crafted lyrics, producing a series of innovative shows. His creative efforts won him professional encouragement and support from Stephen Sondheim and the Richard Rodgers Foundation, among others. Passion for life, devotion to his work and a goofy and optimistic sense of humor kept Jon on the path that has led to the critical and popular success of "Rent."

Based on a concept by Billy Aronson, "Rent" translates the story of Puccini's "La Boheme," from the Left Bank in 1860's Paris to the East Village in today's New York. In the setting of that contemporary bohemian world Larson knew and loved, a company of 15 young actors explores the mysteries of life and love, of loss and death. The threat of tuberculosis has been replaced by the specter of AIDS. The relative simplicity of another century's bohemian life has given way to contemporary complexity.

Directly and poignantly "Rent" faces the effects of addiction and alienation, of dysfunction and co-dependency, of homelessness and gentrification, of sexual liberation and enslavement to habits and passions. The story is told through a succession of varied and well-crafted songs, each evocative and many moving. Together these songs vividly portray interwoven lives marked by desire and the hope for relationship, by shame and the quest for integrity, by despair and the yearning for glory, by suffering and the search for meaning.

"Rent" extends an opportunity: to see today's bohemian phenomenon whole, in all it's attractions and sorrow. Larson pointedly ends Act I with a conjunction of two songs: "La Vie Boheme," which shouts the satisfactions of life on the edge, and "I Should Tell You," which finds two fearful characters trying to reveal to each other that they both are HIV-positive. "Rent" draws us into the humanity of each straggling character and allows us to see that their pains and fears are not so different from our own.

"Rent" tenders and invitation: to find good in all things, even in the outcasts of society. Larson begins Act II with a stirring gospel anthem, "Seasons of Love," reminding us that the only appropriate measure of any person's life is love. That message may seem banal, but the challenge to us remains: It is only with the eyes of love that we and see love for what it is. "Rent" opens to our view the attempts of a few souls on the fringe of society to discover how to love. If learning to love and choosing love are, for each of them, ongoing tasks, we must admit that they are the tasks of our everyday lives as well.

"Rent" yields a truth: that for each of us each day is a judgment day, a proof of who we are. The inestimable value of that opportunity in each day is affirmed in "Rent"'s final refrain, "No day but today." In the course of "Rent," each of Larson's characters is brought face to face with the finality of each moment and with the precariousness of life. As each character chooses between evasion and love, stagnation and creating, hatred and forgiveness, death and live, we encounter again the challenge of the Book of Deuteronomy: "Choose life."

Larson's is not the strident voice of a "fundamentalist liberal" who approves of everything avant-garde while repudiating everything traditional, nor is "Rent" dominated by rage or bitterness. It is instead a thoughtful voice, asking us to have reverence for all of creation, even for those we feel certain we can justly criticize. And "Rent" overflows with positive energy, with confident affirmation of the good that is to be found in life and in people.

Larson intended to win a younger audience to the tradition of musical theater and was confident that, with its vital combination of contemporary music and issues, attitude and wit, "Rent" would lure them in. The enthusiastic response to "Rent" in these past months suggest that his hope was not in vain. "Rent" has left its first home at the New York Theatre Workshop and made the move up to Broadway. The Nederlander Theater has once again opened its doors, welcoming a new voice, a new optimism, a new word of truth. Another mark of approval has just come to Larson with the posthumous award of the Pulitzer Prize for playwriting.

Thanks, Jonathan.