Among the stills below taken from the Rent 30th anniversary concert: Aaron Tveit and Rachel Zegler as Roger and Mimi sing “Without You,” then Tveit and Neil Patrick Harris as Mark sing “You’re living in America at the end of the millennium.”
But wait: Aaron Tveit was 12 years old when “Rent” opened on Broadway on April 29, 1996, and Rachel Zegler was seven years old when it ended its Broadway run on September 7, 2008; she wasn’t living in America at the end of the millennium at all, and never performed in “Rent” anywhere before the concert last night at Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theater.
But she was the only one of the 67 members of the cast who had not performed in “Rent” somewhere, sometime at least once. Tveit performed as Roger for three days in 2010 at a star-studded production at the Hollywood Bowl, directed by Neil Patrick Harris, who had performed as Mark, among other places, in the second national tour of “Rent” in 1997.
Jordan Fisher and Kiersey Clemons, who were among the several pairs to duet in “Tango Maureen” as Mark and Joanne, never performed the roles on Broadway (Clemons has never been on Broadway) but they did play those roles at “Rent: Live!,” the Fox TV broadcast on January 27, 2019.
Nicholas Christopher , who made his Off-Broadway debut portraying Tom Collins in the 2011 production of Rent at New World Stages, sang “I’ll Cover You” last night in a duet with Wilson Cruz, who was the second of 15 performers to portray Angel Schunard on Broadway.
Twelve of the fifteen original Broadway cast members did perform at the concert. It happened to be Anthony Rapp’s 55th birthday last night, which seems fitting. The entire event felt like a birthday party, a chance to celebrate (and raise money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fight AIDS), rather than a revival that could allow for any kind of critical reassessment. There were moments that were undeniably thrilling, but with so many performers crowding the stage — three or more portraying the same character during a number, often taking over for one another mid-song – the event served less as a coherent work of theater than an exercise in nostalgia and spot-the-star. (There was Norbert Leo Butz, who made his Broadway debut as one of the 27 performers to portray Roger Davis on Broadway, in the sort-of-death scene (“Your Eyes”) with Tamyra Gray, who made her Broadway debut one of the 23 to portray Mimi Marquez. Was that Telly Leung; was he in “Rent”? Yes as Angel replacement on Broadway 2006) What the “Rent” 30th anniversary concert demonstrated was the continuing affection for the show, at least among the many performers who were cast in it over the years, and among the audience who attended, either in person or for the live stream.
The “pre-show” in the live stream was a largely haphazard affair, with Jay Armstrong Johnson and Troy Iwata, current stars of “Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody,” sounding at times like hosts at a telethon, plugging “Rent” merch and announcing new donors to Broadway Cares, and the interviews they and Ricki Lake conducted soliciting encomiums that felt cult-like.
“Were you a Renthead?” Lake asked Neil Patrick Harris.
“I was a Renthead in theory but I lived in LA, so I didn’t have much interest in sitting for 11 hours to grab a lottery ticket.”
“But you loved the material,” she prompted. “It spoke to you. You wanted to play Mark.”
“Yeah, all of the above,” he agreed, and waxed eloquent. “It was a crisis musical that was just wrought with love and the anthemic lyrics that Jonathan came up with that still live on today.”
“Yeah, that stand the test of time.”
“’No day but today’ Hello?”
But then he offered a little perspective on that “no day but today” when Lake asked him about his two children, who are sixteen years old.
“I asked Harper if she wanted the link to the live feed. And she said ‘oh my gosh, that sounds like so fun, but I have homework and other things’.”
