'Rent' musical celebrates its 30th Broadway anniversary with a starry show: 'No day but today'

NEW YORK (AP) — Jordan Fisher was in middle school when he first heard it. He was at his first cast party, gathering with fellow performers around his drama teacher's piano after some community theater.

The song everyone was singing was about living life and measuring life, and there were a bunch of weird numbers — like 525,600. He wouldn't be the same after hearing it.

“I was like, ‘What is this?’” recalls Fisher. “That shifted things for me. I don’t think I’ll ever really be able to put a finger on it other than the fact that it was something that was supposed to happen.”

That song was, of course, the barn-burning Act 2 opener “Seasons of Love” from the landmark rock musical “Rent,” now celebrating its 30th anniversary of storming Broadway.

“'Rent' hit me. It just did,” says Fisher.

He's joining an astonishing list of Broadway's who's-who to celebrate the milestone Monday with a benefit performance of the show from the Richard Rodgers Theatre.

Original cast members returning to their old roles include Tony-winner Idina Menzel, Tony-nominee Adam Pascal, Tony-nominee Daphne Rubin-Vega, Tony-winner Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Fredi Walker, Taye Diggs and Anthony Rapp.

Other “Rent” alumni include Tony-winner Natalie Venetia Belcon, Adam Chanler-Berat, Tony-nominee Nicholas Christopher, Tony-winner Renée Elise Goldsberry, Tracie Thoms, Jose Llana, Tony-nominee Ephraim Sykes and Tony-winner Aaron Tveit.

Some Broadway celebs scheduled to take part include Tony-winner Neil Patrick Harris, Rachel Zegler, Tony-winner Norbert Leo Butz, Tony-nominee Will Chase, Telly Leung and Christopher J. Hanke. Fisher jokingly calls it “'Rent'-cella,” after Coachella.

Seats have been snapped up, but $30 livestream tickets are available. The stream will be accessible for 24 hours following the performance and proceeds go to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

“It’s rare that a show has a life like this and is still exciting and inspirational enough to have a 30th festival, if you will. It’s a really, really special thing,” says Fisher.

Jonathan Larson’s tale of free-spirited artists and street people in New York’s gritty drug- and AIDS-plagued East Village of the early 1990s was inspired by Puccini’s “La Boheme” and found a ready-made audience in young people, as it still does.

“He believed that going to musical theater didn’t just have to be an escape. It didn’t have to just be looking at phantoms and things that happened hundreds of years ago. It could be about the life we’re living right now,” says Rapp.

Rapp says it's appropriate that ticket sales will go to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, which has been offering meals, medication and healthcare to artists since the 1980s. “They can help make a difference to help people get direct aid and direct support in communities around the country.”

Rapp, who originated the role of the scarf-wearing Mark Cohen, was part of the workshop for the off-Broadway production and knew there was something special, if raw, in the fledgling show. “The soul of it was so powerfully there,” he recalls.

He also recalls hearing “Seasons of Love” — with its famous line “525,600 minutes/How do you measure a year in the life?” — for the first time when the cast, musical director Tim Weil and director Michael Greif gathered around a piano.

“I’ve never heard a song like it and certainly not in theater,” Rapp says. “We all leaned forward. Every single element of it was so etched deeply into my soul and my memory.”

He predicted the show might make a splash, but a smallish one: “I meant like the way that off-Broadway things over in the corner could make a bit of a splash and have some energy around it, but certainly never anticipated mainstream and never anticipated Broadway.”

Rapp sees the rock and defiant snarl from “Rent” in the DNA of such shows as “Hadestown,” “Spring Awakening,” “Next to Normal,” “Dear Evan Hansen” and “Hamilton.”

“When you break a dam open, water rushes through. It’s like that,” he says. “Now, there’s a whole new universe of shows that have followed in our footsteps because we broke down the dam that seemed unbreakable.”

“Rent” won Tony Awards for best musical, score and book and a Pulitzer Prize. It lasted on Broadway for 12 years and more than 5,000 performances, launching the careers of its young original cast.

There was a 2005 film version, multiple tours, an off-Broadway revival, international productions, a Hollywood Bowl concert and a live staging on Fox in 2019, which starred Fisher in Rapp's old role.

Larson never lived to see his triumph: He died at age 35 of an aortic aneurysm after its final off-Broadway dress rehearsal in January 1996.

“The torch has been passed and carried by so many incredible artists over the years,” says Rapp. “I think it would thrill Jonathan Larson so much to know that so many wonderful human beings came through and kept his work alive and that they want to come back and celebrate it.”