Thank You, Jonathan

First off, you need to understand something. I saw my first Broadway show at a young age. My mom thought it'd be a good idea to culture me, so I was young when I first saw Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I can actually still remember a few bits from the show. I have been a fan of Broadway and musicals ever since. For my 16th birthday, my family went to New Jersey to visit my grandmother and as a special surprise we ate dinner on the river and then took the ferry over to Manhattan and watched Phantom of the Opera. That I do remember a great deal of. It was an awesome night and while I certainly spent most of my high school years defying my parents and breaking all sorts of underage drinking laws, I still had a side of me that truly enjoyed musical theater.

In college when the goddess divine and I were just dating, she went off to London for a summer (I toiled away at an internship in Knoxville, TN, so clearly she won the battle there) and was introduced to this new show called Rent. Almost the entire original Broadway cast was doing the show, and that summer she saw the show at least two times a week. She was in love with it. She came back, took me to see it and from then on we tried to see it whenever and wherever we could.

When they made a movie based on the play back in '05, we of course went and saw it. Wasn't the best, but if nothing else it was great seeing the cast together again singing the same songs. About two years ago during a NYC vacation, we saw Rent for the billionth time (or so it seems) and it was that night that we knew things were bad. The cast at the time was stale, the theater was only half-full and nothing seemed right. When they announced that the show was closing after 12 years on Broadway, we both knew it was the right thing to do, even if it meant no more Rent on Broadway.

A couple weeks ago commercials advertised that a national tour of Rent was swinging through DC, and while I was prepared to write it off, a wrinkle was thrown in that I could not pass up: Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp were reprising their original roles as Roger and Mark. I knew we had to go. I bought tickets within 3 minutes of seeing the commercial.

To say my wife had a crush on Adam is like me saying I only 'like' UK basketball. She adored him. And Anthony was with Rent from the beginning, and had a close friendship with Jonathan Larson, who wrote the show and died at 32 the night before the show hit Broadway. It's an emotional story, and I will let better writers give you the sense of what that was like.

Last night's performance was everything we wanted. Sure, Adam and Anthony are older than they were in 1996 when the show brought Broadway back to life. But they own those roles, and never will anyone do them better. My wife and I sang along and it got a little misty during the parts where death and life are celebrated, even though we know the show down to its steps and beats. Even though outshone by the two main leads, even the other actors did a solid job, making the whole show one for the memory bank.

I'll remember this night like I do that first viewing of Joseph and my surprise trip to see Phantom. As for Rent, it will always hold a special place, because it's one of those things my wife and I have together. For that, I can fall back on the words Anthony always said before each performance: Thank You, Jonathan.