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[aiglet]

When I was 16, my boyfriend went in to the city on a Friday afternoon to sleep out all night to get tickets for us to go to the theater the next night. We were going to go see Rent, which is about to end its run at the Nederlander theater, after over ten years and several cast changes.

Comments

[prock]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whippersnappers, the lot of you!

When I was sixteen, ten years before you, all I had to deal with was global thermonuclear annihilation, as dramatized in movies like "The day after" and "Threads".

The more things change, the more they stay the same. At least I didn't have to walk to school in waist high snow uphill both ways.

;)

[vixyish]

That was my sixteen as well.

A few years ago, my six-years-younger husband and our a-couple-years-younger-than-that roommate rented The Day After, and watched it more or less from the point of view of anthropological curiosity. I had an interesting time explaining to them that we were actually scared of this stuff back then, that the news was telling us it was a very real possibility.

Meanwhile, in drama class, we were listening to the librettos of Phantom and Les Mis and Chess and Sweeney Todd. Which has nothing to do with anything, really.

[phantomdancer]

I saw Spring Awakening, and while I liked it, it was certainly rough in parts and it didn't seem to have any coherent message. It was an interesting performance, but it didn't have the crushing emotional impact that Rent did the first time you saw it. I actually walked out of the theater wondering what the big deal was about. Good play, but not revolutionary.

my two cents.

[tibicina]

Well, the play to which the music was added was revolutionary... but, again, it was revolutionary in 1891.

Then again, Rent was based on La Boheme, though admittedly a lot less closely than Spring Awakening is based on its play.

Still, in America, teenagers having sex will always and forever be controversial, amen. (And a play that seems to criticize the adults for not understanding and suggest that adults being stupid about the teenagers having sex will lead to the teens dying... again, this is hardly news to a lot of people, but especially in the times of more people calling for abstinence-only sex ed, is still clearly a message that resonates with people.)

That said, I agree that Rent is the better musical. Or Avenue Q, for that matter.

[sdelmonte]

All I can say is that anything and everything you can name beats High School Musical.

[thedalikiss]

Amen!

[autographedcat]

Yesterday's subversive is today's normal is tomorrow's passé. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.

[ladymondegreen]

Do you know the musical Tick Tick Boom? It was sort of the proto-Rent, before Jonathan Larson got his mind around the concept of hanging it on an older framework.