'Rent' has roots that run deep

Calling "Rent" - opening at Lake City Playhouse Jan. 13 - a "musical that celebrates sin" is like calling the opera classic "La Boheme" - which I was fortunate to see in Coeur d'Alene this year - a degenerate debacle. "Rent," which won a Pulitzer and multiple Tony Awards and has been produced in 24 languages worldwide, is based on Puccini's heartwrenching tale of extreme poverty, unaffordable fatal illness, and love despite it all. Art is about the big picture; sometimes you have to step back to see it.

Just substitute the old for the new, and the parallels emerge. In "La Boheme," it was Musetta's tuberculosis. In "Rent," Mimi has HIV/AIDS. Both diseases are killers disproportionately attacking the poor, both condemned by their societies (TB was also associated with vampirism). Giacomo Puccini's bohemians lived in the ghettos of Paris; playwright-lyricist Jonathan Larson's, in New York's infamous East Village. Both are massive cities with wealth extremes, influx of immigrants and dashed hopes, and much suffering.

The main characters are artists in some form. They were all poor, judged, mismatched in love, and dealing with fatal illness. Both have scenes and settings reflecting real places and events in the New York and Paris of their times and if you look a little deeper, enduring plights of the human condition.

Larson was himself a starving artist for a time, and died too early of an aortic aneurysm. He believed in art and opera and mourned the modern loss of youthful interest in them. He aimed to revive that interest by writing a musical, marrying the themes of "La Boheme" to modern day New York, so what he called "the MTV generation" could better relate. "Rent" opened in 1994, 100 years after "La Boheme." Not to immediate success, either; his heart failed before his creation earned its highest achievements.

The letter in Wednesday's Press condemning the play is apropos of its message, in a way. The gender-nonspecific quote in it can't be credited, at least not originally, to "Rent." It's from the 1976 film "Car Wash." As long as we're quoting, here are a few more from "Rent" songs:

"Draw a line in the sand and then make a stand." - song, "Rent"

"To being an us - for once - instead of a them." - "La Vie Boheme"

"You'll never share real love until you love yourself." - "Goodbye Love"

"Forget regret or life is yours to miss." - "Another Day"

I rarely write about a specific production, so why this time? Death, I suppose. No, I don't mean Musetta and Mimi. I mean art.

Our household is still mourning the loss of Borders and the departure of Barnes & Noble before it even arrived. Spokane's opera lies in its grave and Coeur d'Alene's is struggling. Musicals are trying to return, but gone is the easy proliferation of the likes of "Sound of Music" and "Carnival." Does anyone visit galleries anymore, unless they offer wine at Artwalk?

Art has a magic society needs. It comforts in hard times. More importantly, art's alternating visions, understatements and hyperboles help expand the mind (rarely is art meant as a direct representation).

Bohemians Mozart and Da Vinci were rebels of their times, judged offensive and dangerous to the pious and pure. Even while ostensibly entertaining and however it's judged, art - reassuring and objectionable, predictable and shocking, rigid and raucous - broadens the borders of the human experience.

Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Email [email protected]