'Rent' Is Due on Broadway

Newsweek
March 18, 1996
By Carla Koehl and Lucy Howard

An off-Broadway rock musical about HIV-positive artists, transvestites and outcasts? Not a show you'd expect people without nose rings to line up for. But Rent has become such a hot ticket that even the glitterati can't get into the show's 150-seat theater in New York. Miranda Richardson, Veronica Webb, Patti LuPone, Tommy Tune and Woody Allen can't get tickets. Mikhail Baryshinkov, Harrison Ford, William Morris guru Arnold Rifkin, Miramax's Harvey Weinstein and producer Peter Guber had to stew on the waiting list before getting in. At least the Rent line will be shorter next month: it's slated to move to a 1,200-seat Broadway house in April, just in time for the Tony deadline.