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When New York-based director Karen Azenberg heard that a local production of "Rent" would be playing at Pioneer Theatre Company, she placed an urgent call to Utah.
"Whoever you've got directing this production, please, reconsider!" Azenberg begged PTC artistic director Charles Morey.
Not because she thought Morey had lost his mind programming the sex-and-drug soaked musical in the high-mountain bosom of Mormondom. Not at all.
Instead, Azenberg phoned Morey to plead that he choose her to direct Pioneer Theatre Company's production of Jonathan Larson's trail-blazing musical. "I usually don't throw myself at the feet of theater directors, but this is a special case," Azenberg said.
Fortunately, Morey had yet to select a director, and Azenberg successfully made her case as a TFOL — theater friend of Larson.
And, truth be told, Pioneer Theatre Company doesn't usually find directors so uniquely positioned to direct such a genre-defining work as "Rent." Azenberg had an insider's history with the musical.
She also had experience with Utah's distinctive theater-going demographic, having choreographed PTC's 2007 production of "Les Misérables" and directed and choreographed the company's 2009 production of "Miss Saigon."
Azenberg was a friend and theater community colleague of Larson years before his unexpected 1996 death. She knew the aspiring playwright and composer during his table-waiting days at the Moondance Diner, when he lived in a Lower Manhattan loft with no heat. She directed his early work, "Blocks," long before "Rent" earned him a posthumous Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Best Musical. And she was in attendance during one of the first-ever readings for the rock-opera musical.
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Plugging into a rock opera • Fifteen years after "Rent" opened off-Broadway, the show remains an icon of the 1990s. "Rent" became the zeitgeist musical of young New Yorkers wracked by AIDS and HIV soon after it first opened in 1996.
" 'Hair' and other musicals using rock music were works of their time, but here was a story to be told," Azenberg said. "The way it reworked Puccini's 'La bohème' to inhabit such a powerful story with such powerful music with such a freshness and rawness to it was nothing short of jaw-dropping."
The musical's autobiographical plot became weighted with irony as it opened just a day after Larson died of an aortic dissection in his heart. The play, of course, became a pop culture phenomenon, as legions of "Rent-heads" — much younger than the stereotypical image of theater's blue-haired audiences — flocked to watch the musical again and again.
Rent-heads were thrilled with the musical's depiction of the highs and lows of the artistic life, its unabashed celebration of gay and lesbian identity, and, above all, its seize-the-day message of love's eternal power.
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Thickening a stock plot • Set in the Lower East Side neighborhood in which Larson lived and worked, the musical follows the fortunes of three romantic couples, plus Mark, an aspiring documentary filmmaker. Mark's trying to document real life, despite his sense that "real life's getting more like fiction each day."
Mark's roommate is Roger (played by Fabio Monteiro for PTC's production), a guitarist and recovering drug addict with HIV, grasping to write one big hit before he's felled by illness. Mimi (Halle Morse), is the nightclub dancer who's after his heart.
Then there's the philosopher and anarchist Tom (Nik Walker), who dreams of opening a restaurant in Santa Fe when he's not stoking the flames of Angel (Jason Gotay), a drag queen with AIDS.
The most contentious coupling is that of lawyer Joanne (Adrienne Muller), and Maureen, a performance artist and one-woman firecracker who had recently dumped Mark. The part of Maureen is played by 27-year-old Florida native Rachel Moulton, who's wanted the role every day for the past 14 years, ever since she saw the show with her mother.
"She's a head-turner and free spirit who always knows who she is," Moulton said. "I remember thinking how cool it was to see such a powerful woman on stage."
The same could be said for the musical itself. "Rent" finds its muscle in the way it recasts the seedy and vulgar into a narrative context that's joyful, and even, at times, brave. Its characters love, fight, dance, sing and swear in scenes of searing honesty that never let the audience second-guess their feelings.
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Raising "Rent" • All that backstory, of course, follows the play's journey to Utah.
Ten or 15 years ago, even if the copyright would have been available, PTC would have shied away from producing "Rent," according to Morey.
But each season is a balancing act, he said, with productions tailored to traditional tastes, as well as those craving something more forward-looking. When the production rights were finally released for regional productions, the time seemed right. After all, "a lot of theater we look at now as safe and conventional was terribly controversial for its day," Morey said.
Moulton recalls seeing couples walk out of the Florida theater where she and her mother first saw the show.
Utah audiences were exposed to the musical's power via a 1998 national tour, as well as the 2005 film adaptation. Then there were the headlines sparked by the musical's production staged in 2009 at Judge Memorial Catholic High School.
Theater instructor Darin Hathaway worried about producing the show — not at the prospect of possibly offending parents, but rather preserving the integrity of Larson's work.
School administrators and parents were consulted before auditions opened. The school edition of the musical came with cuts and deletions, even if the story seemed "surprisingly intact," in Hathaway's estimation.
For example, "Contact," Act Two's steamy musical number, was gone. "La Vie Bohème" lost some of its raunch, as F-bombs were excised. The script let school directors decide how much physical intimacy would be displayed between same-sex couples. Hathaway and his colleagues drew the line at kissing.
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New-gen 'Rent-heads'? • That "Rent" would ever make its way inside a Utah Catholic high school, kissing or no, would probably shock Utah theatergoers who greeted it with a full-on French kiss in late 1998 when the touring show hit Capitol Theatre.
"I remember people cheering in the balcony," said Bruce Granath, now chief marketing officer of MagicSpace Entertainment. "There was a sense that the show's arrival here was a watershed moment."
Azenberg recalls even some New Yorkers being taken aback by the musical's brash energy when it took Broadway by storm all those years ago. But it was a shock that soon settled into bewildered admiration for what Larson created but never lived to see.
"The world has evolved a lot since then," Azenberg said. "People with AIDS don't take their medication to the beep of a timer anymore, and now I'm working with a cast so young almost none of them have lost an associate to AIDS. But Larson's message is one for all time."
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Pioneer Theatre Company's 'Rent'
When • Opens June 10, continues through June 25. Monday-Thursday, 7:30 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m.; Saturday matinees at 2 p.m.
Where • Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre, 300 S. 1400 East, University of Utah campus, Salt Lake City
Info • $34-$54. Contains mature themes and strong language. Call 801-581-6961 for more information, or visit http://www.pioneertheatre.org
Video • To view a video of "Rent," visit youtube.com/watch?v=SmNUUVlS53Y