“Rent,” Jonathan Larsen’s iconic Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning musical, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, coming to The Grand Opera House in Wilmington Oct. 28-30.
The rock opera re-imagining of Puccini’s “La Bohème” became a phenomenon in the late 1990s. It follows a year in the lives of seven artists struggling to survive and follow their dreams without selling out amid life in New York City’s East Village, under the shadow of HIV.
Out actor and Philadelphia native Danny Harris Kornfeld stars in the anniversary production as Mark Cohen, an aspiring filmmaker who also serves as the narrator of the story. Kornfeld said Mark was the role he always wanted to play in “Rent.”
“It was always the dream show of mine and I always thought if there was anyone I could be in it, it would be Mark,” he said. “He’s the everyman of the show. He’s very relatable in terms of being in your early 20s, being single and having lots of your friends in relationships. It’s very easy to identify with someone who is the observer of all that is going on around you. He has such a hunger for doing good work and being artistically fulfilled but doing work that is meaningful and not commercial. Any artist can relate to that: wanting to have a successful career but wanting it to be on their own terms.”
Kornfeld said he fell in love with the music of “Rent” long before he ever saw the stage show.
“I first got introduced to the soundtrack when I was 9,” he said. “My parents had seen it and they gave us the CD. We’d listen to it in the car and we’d listen to it on the way to soccer practice and school. When I was 11, I got to see it in New York. It was the first Broadway show I ever saw. Joey Fatone was Mark and I became obsessed with it.”
Kornfeld said the 20th-anniversary shows have been attracting longtime fans of the musical as well as younger audiences who are experiencing the show live for the first time.
“We’ve had the people who have seen it 17 times and are seeing it in five different cities on the tour,” Kornfeld said of “Rent” fans. “But we also have the new generation: high-school kids who have seen the movie on Netflix and have then wanted to see the show. Or they know that Lin-Manuel [Miranda] has credited Jonathan Larson as so much inspiration for him for ‘Hamilton’ and ‘In the Heights,’ and people want to check out what his predecessor was. So it’s been a good mix of those who are familiar with those who have never seen it before.”
The Playhouse on Rodney Square presents “Rent” Oct. 28-30 at The Grand Opera House, 818 N. Market St., Wilmington, Del. For more information or tickets, call 302-652-5577 or visit www.thegrandwilmington.org.