Broadway Asks: How We Gonna Find Next Year’s Rent?

Back in the ’90s, Jonathan Larson wanted to pen a show for the MTV generation, to meld the worlds of rock ’n’ roll and musical theater. And when Rent opened on Broadway in 1996—transferring from the more avant-garde, experimental environment of the off-Broadway theater scene and following in the footsteps of predecessors like Hair and A Chorus Line—it revolutionized commercial musicals. Larson’s rock opera masterpiece found a place for itself as the gateway drug of Broadway—a way into the genre for young people and people who “don’t like musicals”—a place it’s held pretty steadily for almost 12 years.

Critics and historians called Rent the Hair of the ’90s, and ever since its phenomenal success, the theater community has been on the lookout for its successor. New shows have been striving to be “The Next Rent” for years—in fact, it almost seems matter of course lately to slap the label on at least one new show per year. It’s often applied to the quirkier off-Broadway shows, but in recent years, it’s been the buzzword about shows on Broadway, too.

With a closing date recently set for all-too-soon Sept. 7, questions of tracing Rent’s lineage seem more prominent than ever. Where will we pass the proverbial torch, if anywhere at all?

This year, the matter of legacy seems to manifest itself in two shows, Passing Strange and In the Heights—both of which are big potential contenders for best musical, both of which are shows that transferred from off-Broadway runs, and both of which feature their creators on stage. Passing Strange was developed in collaboration with the Public Theater. Half of its writing team, Stew, was approached to create a musical while performing his material downtown at Joe’s Pub. Lin-Manuel Miranda began work on In the Heights over seven years ago as a student at Wesleyan University. After a run at 37 Arts last year, it’s now produced on Broadway by Jeffrey Seller and Kevin McCollum, who also produce Rent. Despite the similarities between these two shows, though, they’re two opposite sides of the same family tree.

Passing Strange follows a young man from Los Angeles who is pursuing his love for music, but in doing so, he fails to realize the importance of love for the people in his life. It is more of a musical than Spring Awakening—the 2007 Tony Award-winning Best Musical—yet more of a rock concert at the same time. Spring Awakening tries to follow in the fragmented footsteps of deconstructed shows like Company, in which the songs are the commentary and not the action, and yet the result is far more of a play with music than a true musical. The lyrics are often too abstract to even hint at character development. Passing Strange incorporates the plot and character-driving song while still maintaining its hybrid rock concert/musical theater nature.

In terms of form, In the Heights, a look at life in El Barrio, makes no excuses or apologies. It brings hip hop and Latin music into the musical theater form, flawlessly blending the new and the traditional with more similarity to what Larson did than either Passing Strange or Spring Awakening. It would be inaccurate, though, to trace Rent’s legacy solely through its music and structure. To its many devoted fans, Rent is primarily a show about love, community, and survival, and that, too, is a vital part of where its legacy will lie. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a musical that is such a vibrant celebration of love and life—and if we’re to look at what Rent will leave behind, it is only fair to look at it in light of Larson’s simple, ever-resonant question: “How about love?”

But despite the fervent debate surrounding Passing Strange and In the Heights, it may be a long time before we see another phenomenon like Rent, for reasons both economic and artistic. Where Rent had once monopolized an entire sector of theatergoers, there’s now a schism between giant commercial machines and the little shows that could. With the Nederlander Theatre vacant this fall, perhaps the devoted will simply divide, rather than galvanize under something new. But history has a way of eventually repeating itself, so perhaps we’ll just have to wait and see.