Word: renting
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Compared with the crowded, colorful displays of loot in most Broadway theater lobbies, the merchandise counter for Rent looks downright spare: a modest assortment of sweatshirts, mugs, CDs and T shirts in basic-grunge black-and-white. The show, too--on my first return visit since reviewing it 12 years ago--looks a bit paler than it did back in 1996, when it opened off-Broadway to so much acclaim that it made the jump to Broadway just two months later. The aids-centric story lines in this East Village update of La Bohčme seem a little dated...
...Hair was the first show to really tap into the sensibility and musical tastes of a young generation, and plenty of musicals since then have tried to bring rock (or at least rocklike) music to the land of Stephen Sondheim and Jerry Herman. None, however, were as successful as Rent, which has grossed more than $280 million on Broadway, helped by a fervent audience of kids, many of whom saw the show multiple times...
...Rent didn't exactly start a revolution. Broadway continues to do robust business; total attendance climbed 2.7% last year, to a record high of 12.3 million. But the vast majority of hit musicals since Rent, from The Producers to Jersey Boys, still earn their money the old-fashioned way: by catering to comfortably middlebrow, middle-aged audiences...
They don't look a lot like Rent either. That show, for all its breakthroughs, had an audience dominated largely by white kids from the suburbs. Meanwhile, Broadway audiences have been growing steadily more diverse in recent years; according to Theater League figures, about 26% of all Broadway theatergoers last season were non-Caucasian, a record high. One big reason was The Color Purple, the hit musical based on Alice Walker's novel of the same name, backed by the seemingly unstoppable Oprah Winfrey...
...creation. Jack Black and Mos Def star as two video store clerks, Jerry and Mike. When Jerry accidentally erases the contents of all the videotapes, they resort to “Sweding,” or re-enacting and recording, each of the videos that their customers want to rent. The films are said to be Sweded after Jerry’s claim that customers must wait longer and pay extra money for them because the videos come from Sweden. The movies include “Ghostbusters,” “Robocop...