But there’s one person who never got to seeRent‘s success: Larson himself.
Jonathan Larson.Library of Congress
Larson had been working onRentfor six years before his death. The idea of the musical, loosely based on the operaLa Boheme, came to him from friend Billy Aronson.
“I had this idea for aBohèmefor now; for our generation that had sort of a ‘noise’ and [that] captured the un-Bohèmeness of it: not sweet and not luscious,” AronsonrecalledtoPlaybill. “Since I don’t write music, I went looking for a composer, and I was affiliated with Playwrights Horizons, so Ira Weitzman, the director of musical theatre there, recommended two composers, one of whom was Jonathan Larson.”
A staged reading of the show would follow in 1993, with a two-week workshop coming the next year and a fully staged production at the NYTW’s new East Village location in 1996. It was the first musical NYTW ever produced.
Pamela Littky/FOX
It was during the rehearsals for that production that Larson started battling some health issues.
An ambulance brought Larson to the ER of Cabrini Medical Center, the hospital nearest the theater. “He was pale and clammy,” Burkhart, who met him at the hospital, told PEOPLE. “You’ve never seen a person breathe as hard as he was breathing.” But an electrocardiogram and an X-ray appeared normal. A doctor diagnosed food poisoning, pumped Larson’s stomach, prescribed a powerful painkiller, Toradol, and sent him home.
The next morning, feeling no better, Larson phoned Cabrini to inquire whether tests showed evidence of food poisoning. “They couldn’t find the results,” Jonathan’s friend Eddie Rosenstein, who spent that day nursing him, told PEOPLE back then. “But he was told they were sure if there was something wrong he would have been notified.”
That evening, Larson’s roommate Brian Carmody returned to their apartment near Greenwich Village to find Jonathan in bed, short of breath and speaking in a quiet mumble. He tried to eat but was only able to get down some Jell-O and tapioca pudding.
The following afternoon, Larson called his father in Albuquerque. “His chest still hurt, his lower back hurt, and he had a low-grade fever,” recalled Al to PEOPLE. “Frankly, I didn’t think it was a life-threatening situation.”
“‘I don’t know,'” Burkhart remembered Larson saying. “I don’t feel right, but I just want to get out of here.'” The doctor who finally saw Larson ordered an X-ray and an EKG. Both were read as normal. Told he had a virus, Larson was advised to go home and rest. “‘They can’t find anything. Nothing has changed,'” he told Carmody.
After the rehearsal — the first timeRentwas ever staged in its entirety — he met withTimesreporter Anthony Tommasini in the only quiet space available, the theater’s tiny box office. Toward the end of their talk, sometime after midnight, Larson told Tommasini, “I think I may have a life as a composer.”
The remark would later haunt the reporter. When Carmody returned from a night out at 3:40 a.m., he discovered Larson’s lifeless body on the kitchen floor, a gas flame still burning under a scorched tea kettle. “I was roaring at the top of my lungs, ‘Wake up! Wake up, Jon!’” Carmody told PEOPLE. “I still thought he’d be okay.” But police arriving shortly afterward told Carmody that Larson was dead. An autopsy later in the week revealed an aneurysm — an uncommon disorder, particularly in such a young person.
Alexandra Wyman/WireImage
Cast in the Off-Broadway production ofRentat that time were a slew of unknown stars, including Idina Menzel, Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Jesse L. Martin, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, and Taye Diggs.
All banded together after Larson’s death; Rubin-Vega described the gang toPlaybill“an inseparable posse”
“We all walked through the fire together,” Rapp toldPlaybillin 2014.“Sometimes, in crisis, people can really fall apart or it could really splinter people off… But it was like the opposite thing happened for all of us. It brought us even stronger together, so that foundation is always there.”
All — including the show’s producers, Jeffrey Seller and Kevin McCollum — agreed that the show had to go on despite the tragedy.
“When we [approached] intermission, they just rebelled,” NYTW artistic director James C. Nicola toldPlaybill. “Life was imitating art in more ways than one, and the group of angst-ridden bohemian rockers danced in celebration of Larson’s life and work. … It was touch and go whether or not Jonathan’s parents — because they were in New Mexico, and they had to get on planes to be here for that — were going to make it, [but] they did, and that was very powerful. It was an incredibly emotional experience to sit through in that room that night.”
Every performance from that moment on became dedicated to Larson, including its NYTW opening. After the show received raved reviews, a Broadway transfer was imminent. “We had no choice,” McCollum toldPlaybill. “Everybody had a higher purpose, and it was to get Jonathan’s work heard and seen. And there was no looking back. … We were breathing life into the voice of a young man who had much more to say … There was no room to be afraid.”
Rentopened on Broadway on April, 29, 1996 to rave reviews. At the Tonys that year, it was awarded the prestigious best musical trophy. Larson also won two posthumous Tonys, for best book and best score, as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The show ran for 5,123 performances before closing on Sep. 07, 2008. Countless productions around the world have appeared since.
In memory of Larson, his friends and family started the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation — which provides financial grants to artists in support of their creative work. His family’s estate helped produce Fox’sRentlive, alongside Mark Platt (Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert, Grease Live, La La Land, Wicked).
Throughout it all, Larson’s music — including songs like “La Vie Bohème,” “Light My Candle,” “Take Me or Leave Me,” and “Seasons of Love” — have become anthems for its fans. And Larson’s legacy has lived on in one lyric in particular: “No day but today,” which many point to as the lesson to learn from the early end to Larson’s life.
source: people.com
