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Jonathan Larson’s Pulitzer Prize–­winning East Village musical is still charming, with a good pop score, even as it’s become a period piece before our very eyes.

Jonathan Larson, who wrote both words and music, died at 35 of an aortic aneurysm upon returning from the final dress rehearsal a month ago. This is doubly sad when you consider that the gifted young man was groping his way to a unified personal style that this uneven, scattershot show does not yet achieve. For although Rent profits from the Boheme infrastructure, it is also hampered by it, as the author is obliged to think up clever parallels or disheveled variations that invite unfavorable comparison with the original. Still, even this partial success holds a genuine promise cut off from full fulfillment. The poet Rodolfo becomes Roger, the punk rocker; the painter Marcello, Mark Cohen, a filmmaker brandishing his camcorder. The philosopher Colline is now Tom Collins, a mechanic of some sort; the musician Schaunard is Angel Schunard, a transvestite and street drummer who succors the mugged Collins and becomes his lover. Mimi is still Mimi but is now a performer in an S&M nightclub, and a junkie afflicted with AIDS. Roger, Collins and Schunard are all HIV-positive. Benny (i.e., Benoit), the landlord, is a homeboy gone yuppie, full of bohemian-unfriendly schemes, and a rival for Mimi’s favors. Maureen (Musetta), a performance artist, has left Mark for a lesbian lawyer, Joanne. There are all sorts of approximations of the opera but also a few radical departures. Thus it is Angel who dies of AIDS, whereas Mimi merely seems to die. Her fever breaks, and she revives to join the rest of the cast in the finale, “There is no future, there is no past./ I live each moment as my last."—John Simon

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