Rent Coming to Bass Concert Hall

Published April 24, 2009 at 8:35 p.m.

Pearl Jam's announcement as one of the headliners of this year's Austin City Limits festival (not to mention a quick glance at the recently-released Lollapalooza lineup) confirms one of our long-held suspicions: the 90s nostalgia boom is in full swing. But if alternative rock was never your thing, fret not—there are other opportunities to indulge a little bit of sentimentality. For instance, have you heard that Rent is coming to town?

Fifteen years after the quintessential 90s musical made its debut at the New York Theatre Workshop and over a decade since it won the Pulitzer and big stack of Tony Awards for its portrayal of artistic types living in America at the end of the millennium, Rent is coming to Bass Concert Hall, thanks to Broadway Across America. Originally conceived as a way to "bring Musical theater to the MTV generation", Rent exists as both a product of and a comment on the decade in which it's set.

Now that the generation it was intended to appeal to is busy spawning generations of their own, Rent may come off as more than a little dated, but given the aforementioned 90s revival trend (did we mention Letters To Cleo are coming to town?), that might actually help keep it relevant - at least more so than Chris Columbus' film version, anyway. If you want to learn how it plays in the current context, the show runs May 12-17.

[Tickets]

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