How do you measure the life of a famous Broadway musical? By the excitement over its 30th anniversary benefit concert, of course!
Rent original cast members Idina Menzel, Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, and Daphne-Rubin Vega were already set to take the stage alongside 60 Broadway performers and stars on Oct. 26 for a one-night-only concert benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Now, more musical legends will step onto the stage alongside them. Taye Diggs — who played Benny in the original Broadway cast — is joining the concert, alongside Neil Patrick Harris, Rachel Zegler, and Norbert Leo Butz.
The full cast includes original understudies and ensemble members Yassmin Alers, Gilles Chiasson, Shelley Dickinson, David Driver, Darius de Haas, and Rodney Hicks; as well as Broadway stars Natalie Venetia Belcon, Adam Chanler-Berat, Nicholas Christopher, Merle Dandridge, Trey Ellett, Jordan Fisher, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Jose Llana, John Eric Parker, Jai Rodriguez, Antonique Smith, Ephraim Sykes, and Aaron Tveit.
Rent, the 30th Anniversary Concert is a celebration of the Pulitzer-Prize and Tony-award winning musical by Jonathan Larson, who died the day of the show’s first off-Broadway premiere. Set in New York in the late 1980s, the musical tracks the lives and losses of a group of friends trying to survive amidst the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It’s loosely inspired by the 1896 opera La bohème and follows the embattled group as they attempt to keep the spirit of bohemia alive in a city rapidly transforming under capitalism. The show premiered on Broadway in 1996 and became a beloved hit. Six of the eight principal cast members returned for the 2005 film.
Rent (2005) cast members on November 14, 2005 in New York City.
Paul Hawthorne/Getty Images
The anniversary concert will be filmed at Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre on the set of Hamilton. Tickets for the 30th anniversary concert are already sold out but $30 livestream tickets are available for purchase. Broadway Direct will also give out 24 lottery tickets to see the show live. It’s a nod to Rent’s legacy with accessibility; the show started the rush system — a first-come first-served ticket process to see shows for cheap prices — that remains a cornerstone of Broadway ticketing to this day.
“Jonathan wrote Rent in honor of the people he knew who were living and struggling with HIV and in honor of the many friends and contemporaries he lost to AIDS,” Michael Greif, the show’s original director, said in a statement when the show was first announced. “I know he’d be proud and honored to join forces with Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his milestone musical.”