by Pat Cerasaro — May 21, 2012
RENT owned the 90s. No other Broadway show managed to have the dual impact on society by becoming not only a pop culture phenomenon, but also changing perceptions of what a musical on Broadway could be - and, most importantly, how it could sound. Contemporary, cool, caustic and engaging, RENT updated LA BOHEME to the East Village just as Jonathan Larson updated the way the general public looked at Broadway at a time when musicals had fallen farther out of fashion than they had since their early years approaching the turn of the last century. Yet, at the end of the millennium - to quote one of the show's lyrics - RENT represented the hopes, dreams and desires of many Broadway babies and what we hoped would be achieved on the Great White Way in the new century. While SPRING AWAKENING, AMERICAN IDIOT and NEXT TO NORMAL certainly stand as solid continuations of the rock musical formula recalibrated and made anew in the mold made by RENT, no show since RENT has quite managed to have the cultural impact and win over audiences and critics alike in as major a way as that Tony Award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical has - with the exception, perhaps, of WICKED, which obviously owes a debt to its Oz-ian source inspiration and the built-in audience that comes along with that. Yes, indeed, RENT represents an entire generation in its sound, style, ideals and overall feeling, mood and tone and the subsequent success of the many members of the simply astounding assortment of talents that comprised the original cast acts as evidence that the show may have had the cast of the decade, as well.
