I liked the play overall, but the ending is breathtaking in the way it cheaply panders to the audience. After all that honesty, to come up with a phony “happy” ending (which isn’t all that happy, since it’s inevitable it will repeat as tragedy in a few days or moths) is appalling.
Rent wasn’t the first or even one of the earliest things to mention it.
Rent was also about five years after the death of Ryan White and three after Magic Johnson’s admission he had it. So it was out there among non-gay people for the public for a long time.
I didn’t like the movie either. The main thing I liked about the play was the staging, which of course is much different in the film, but you can rent the Broadway Final Performance DVD (different cast from the movie and original Broadway cast) that will give you more of an idea and you might like it better than the movie.
He is amazing. I was familiar with him on Law & Order before I realized it was him in the OBC. I owned the OBC soundtrack and I admired the voice of Tom Collins (esp. the I’ll Cover You Reprise). It wasn’t until later that I put two and two together… wow. He is quite possibly my favorite actor in the film version.
Jesse Martin’s triple twirl in the Santa Fe number was particularly impressive I thought.
I’ve seen the play once, the DVD version. I thought it was pretty good, but I’m not a die-hard fan or anything.
I just thought I would add to Nava’s statement about AIDS. Judging by your OP you’re interpreting half the cast dying of AIDS as some kind of melodramatic exaggeration of reality. For a lot of inner-city LGBT communities of the time, it wasn’t. That is part of the tragedy of the AIDS epidemic – there were entire communities being struck down left and right and nobody gave a shit because the ones dying were junkies and gays. Imagine if half the people you knew were dying from a horrendous disease and nobody knew why and society, the government, the CDC, didn’t seem to particularly care. That happened. The Castro District and New York City were among areas hit the absolute hardest. This play is a snapshot of history.
If you’re interested in this topic from a historical standpoint, I strongly recommend one of the best books I have ever read, And The Band Played On by Randy Shilts. It is an excellent piece of journalism and I always knew AIDS was bad, but I never realized how extremely bad it was until I read this book. It is a grotesque fucking disease and the vast majority of the carnage totally could have been prevented if action had been taken sooner.
Yeah, but… did he have AIDS?
FTR I was taken to see the show as a present and was underwhelmed. But then I saw the movie and loved it. I think the movie had better sound, singing, and choreography, and edited out the parts I didn’t care for (all the long boring phone messages).