January 16, 2008
'Rent' to close on Broadway on June 1
 Tony- and Pulitzer-prize winning "Rent," the seventh-longest running show in Broadway history, will play its final performance at the Nederlander Theater on June 1, producers told the New York Times.
The show's success is intertwined with tragedy, as the Times recounts:
On the night of the final dress rehearsal at the New York Theater Workshop, the nonprofit theater in the East Village where the musical began, Jonathan Larson, the 35-year-old composer and librettist, died of an aortic aneurysm. He had been working for seven years on the musical, which includes portraits of his friends and the artists and addicts in his neighborhood, young people on the edge of poverty and in the shadow of AIDS, battling the coming wave of gentrification in the name of “La Vie Bohème.” The original production launched the careers of Taye Diggs, Idina Menzel, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Jesse L. Martin, Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp. The show was turned into a movie in 2005, also starring some of the original cast of the Broadway musical.
Related: "Rent" half-price through Jan. 31
"Rent" podcasts
January 16, 2008 07:50 AM in Broadway
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