Ten Years On, Rent Still Paying Nicely

For a decade now, Rent has been a Broadway producer’s dream – a cult hit beloved by critics that outgrows its initial status to become a bona fide phenomenon, with a movie adaptation and everything. (Plenty of people despise the show, too, and as anyone in PR will tell you, that kind of animosity only makes your fan base more devoted.) Now, the original cast has reassembled for a semistaged tenth anniversary performance that raised $2 million for AIDS care and New York theatre groups, and while all the hoopla may have been more than creator Jonathan Larson could have imagined (he died shortly before the show opened,) it seems a fitting tribute to one of Broadway’s truly original thinkers.