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After twelve years, 5,124 performances and a haul of $280 million, Rent's Broadway run has come to an end. The musical closed yesterday after a final sold-out performance packed with diehard fans (the "Rentheads") and a smattering of celebrities (a couple Gossip Girl cast members). Just before the curtain came down for the final time, members of the show's original company joined the current cast on stage to "Seasons of Love," one of the show's most famous songs, the Associated Press reports.

RENT, the surprise smash hit musical that premiered in 1996 and went on to become the seventh-longest-running Broadway show in history, will close June 1st, producers have announced. Over the years the show cultivated a fanatical army of young repeat viewers (“Rentheads”) whose ardor has translated into profits of $280 million on Broadway, four Tony awards and a Pulitzer. Productions have been mounted on six continents, while an ill-conceived movie version of the show, filmed in San Francisco, opened in 2005 to widespread derision. And the musical was also famously parodied by the South Park creators in their film Team America, which depicts the faux-hip cast of the Broadway show LEASE belting the show’s climactic chorus, “Everyone has AIDS!”

This week, the City Opera has its Afternoon Arias program where different City Opera singers serenade those in Bryant Park. The programs start at 12:30PM, and another bonus is that you can buy the $25 seat tickets for Opera For All, which the City Opera has brought back for another year (tickets officially go on sale next Monday). The performances scheduled so far are a highlights of new season concert celebration with an afterparty, two performances of La Boheme, and Carmen, from September 7 through September 10.

It's been oh, about five million, thirty-one thousand, three hundred sixty minutes since the musical Rent premiered on Broadway, and Gothamist must admit that because Seasons of Love has been playing over and over again thanks to the ads for the movie Rent, we're tempted to see it in order to get the song out of our head. Some early reviews are out (Variety thinks it's very Chris Columbus, very lame but the Hollywood Reporter is much more positive), but we have enjoyed Perptually Nauseous's take on the film, after seeing it with "with five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred homos." Mainly, it's about realizing that Father Time has truly done his job:

And when the big "La Vie Boheme" number came on, I know, without a doubt, that if I were to be put in that situation, I would be the one saying...

Continue reading "Rent: Worth the Ticket or a Rental?"

While we're not thrilled that the movie version of the musical Rent was shot mostly in San Francisco, Gothamist strongly urges you to go to Bryant Park at lunchtime to hear the cast members of the movie sing songs from the musical in a Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS event. Most of the musical's performers are reprising their roles - Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, Idina Menzel, Wilson Jermaine Herredia, Tracie Thoms, Taye Diggs, Jesse L. Martin (we love you, Detective Green) - plus Rosario Dawson (playing Mimi, the role originated by Daphne Rubin-Vega). They performed on the Today Show, and damn it, we get tear up when we hear "Seasons of Love."

Chris and our production designer Howard and our cinematographer Stephen have all dedicated themselves to defying anyone to recognize that the entire film wasn't shot in NYC. We shall see, but from everything I've seen so far, I think they've done a great job. At any rate, the bottom line is that the East Village has changed so much from when Rent takes place that even when we did shoot there, Howard had to make adjustments to the buildings to make them look authentic to the time of the film.