THEATER: LOWER EAST SIDE STORY

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Rent is a bit overloaded with characters and subplots; the central love story, between Mimi and Roger, gets all but lost in the bustle. But the energy and passion of Larson's music make up for it. A five-piece band on the open, cluttered stage drives an insistent rock beat. The lyrics (there is no spoken dialogue) are resonant but not sanctimonious, with snatches of easy wit. When Roger tells Mimi he has too much baggage for a relationship, she replies, "I'm looking for baggage that goes with mine." In songs like La Vie Boheme, a rousing celebration of the bohemian life, Larson shows a knack for clever, rolling rhymes that never sound forced: "Compassion, to fashion, to passion when it's new/To Sontag, to Sondheim, to anything taboo."

Stephen Sondheim was a mentor to Larson, who grew up in White Plains, New York, and had six musicals (among them Superbia and Tick, Tick...Boom!) produced in downtown workshops and cabarets before Rent. In the summer of 1992 Larson showed an early draft to James C. Nicola, artistic director of the NYTW, which was renovating its performance space. Says Nicola: "He saw the construction, stuck his head in the theater and knew immediately that this was the perfect spot for Rent." They worked together on the show for two years, then called in Greif, who last year staged Randy Newman's Faust at San Diego's La Jolla Playhouse.

Rent is a surprising pick-me-up for another poverty-stricken season of Broadway musicals, dominated by revivals and reworkings of old movies (Victor/Victoria). It's Broadway's dream come true: an audacious, really new musical with crossover appeal and half a dozen starmaking roles (Rubin-Vega's sexy, strong-voiced Mimi stands out in the excellent cast). All that's missing is its creator to take a bow--and promise us more. "I sit every night in that theater and think about what was to come that's now denied to us," says Nicola. "Thirty years of great theater have been lost." But Rent, at least, has been found.

--Reported by Georgia Harbison/New York