Idina Menzel, Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, and Daphne-Rubin Vega are among the original cast of Rent reuniting for a 30th anniversary benefit concert.
On Oct. 26, Rent, the 30th Anniversary Concert will feature the cast performing the Jonathan Larson musical in full. Benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, the one-night-only event is sold out, but tickets are still available for the livestream. In addition to appearances from original cast members — including Wilson Jermaine Heredia and Fredi Walker, with understudies and ensemble members Yassmin Alers, Gilles Chiasson, Shelley Dickinson, David Driver, Darius de Haas, and Rodney Hicks — the event will also feature alumni.
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 are among the alumni set to perform.
The show’s original director, Michael Greif, will also return to helm the event. “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,” Greif said in a statement. “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.”
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Tim Weil, the show’s original music supervisor, will also return for the benefit concert, where he will lead original Rent band members Kenny Brescia, Jeff Potter and Daniel A. Weiss, along with Steve Gelfand.
The rock musical Rent, which “reimagines La Bohème in the AIDS-era East Village of New York City, following a tight-knit group of artists navigating love, loss and survival at the turn of a generation,” won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1996. The award was bestowed on Larson posthumously, as he died before its first public preview.
