RENT

There's a scene in the new musical "RENT" that may be the quintessential romantic moment of the '90s. Roger, a struggling rock musician, and Mimi, a junkie who's a dancer at an S/M club, are having a lovers' quarrel when their beepers go off and each takes out a bottle of pills. It's the signal for an "AZT break," and suddenly they realize that they're both HIV-positive. Clinch. Love duet. If you don't …

…be turned into an exultant sweetness without which life is a grim mechanism. Puccini had his Mimi die. Larson sends his Mimi to the point of extinction and brings her back. There are deaths in "RENT," but Larson needed to balance that with a rebirth. His own death before he could really see how well he had done in an unbearable irony. He left us singing. "RENT" is his song. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bibliography www.siteforrent.com