SOURCE: "Life, Death and Rent," in Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1996, p. 4.

[In the following review, Pacheco recounts the history of Rent as the production prepared for its Broadway premiere.]

It was closing night for the new musical Rent at the New York Theater Workshop, a 150-seat East Village theater where the pop opera, loosely based on Puccini's La Boheme, opened in February. Onstage, friends and creative personnel, including director Michael Greif, mingled with the youthful cast and band in the kind of pizza-and-beer ritual that has been repeated countless times in experimental theater spaces.

But this celebration was distinctly different. For one, television cameras and reporters were present at what had all the giddy earmarks of a bon voyage party. And indeed, this was not just a closing: Rent was on its way into previews for its Broadway opening April 29, and, though no one could have known it...