In the 1980s, many of my friends in New York went to AIDS related funerals on a weekly basis.  This was before the breakthrough of AIDS cocktail therapy that is prolonging lives predominantly in the Western Hemisphere, before Alphabet City had been transformed into a sea of Starbucks, chain stores and hipster nightclubs, before organizations such as DIFFA, Good Samaritan Project and Gay Men’s Health Crisis started raising millions of dollars on behalf of AIDS research. My own beloved first cousin, Stephen Harvey, a brilliant journalist and film curator at MOMA, was also suffering from AIDS during that decade and succumbed to the disease in 1991. He was one of the first to write about having AIDS for The Village Voice in the early 80s (it was such a new phenomenon it was called GRID at the time).

 I remember at my first temp job in 1980, I was a receptionist for a magazine when the art director suddenly went into the hospital for pneumonia and died over the weekend. It was horrible having to tell all these shocked callers on Monday morning over and over again that this young man—whom I had only met in passing–had died mysteriously. It was a grim time to be in New York. The drumbeat of death was loud, relentless and unbearably sad.

This was the point of view that creator Jonathan Larson was coming from when he wrote the music and lyrics for the groundbreaking musical, Rent, about a group of young artists, musicians, both gay and straight, living la vie boheme on the Lower East Side, so to speak, and suffering from the affects of drug addiction and AIDS.  It won the Pulitzer Prize, numerous Tonys and Drama Desk awards and had a rabid following, especially among young people. (At every show, there were always free tickets available to those who would wait in line for hours at a time.) Another tragic chapter of Rent was that Jonathan died of an aortic aneurysm the night before its off-Broadway premiere in 1996.

So it was gratifying to see The Barstow School put on a production of Rent: School Edition on November 6th-8th with a lot of the rawness and obscenity removed, but still with the vitality of the original production. Barstow also was the first schools in Kansas City to tackle this still-controversial musical, and the performers did it with aplomb and spirit. Although Rent has serious adult content, it allowed students to explore social issues in a safe educational environment. (If you want to see another provocative musical, I would recommend Spring Awakening now playing on Broadway, starring Hunter Parrish, the hot young star from Showtime’s Weeds.  But you’ll have to hurry…it’s closing this January.)

Based on Puccini’s La Boheme, the story involves Mark Cohen, played with gusto by Weston Bradley, a filmmaker and narrator of the show, who is shooting a documentary of his friends on Christmas Eve, after his girlfriend, Maureen Johnson (Taylor Phillips) a performance artist, dumps him for another woman, lawyer Joanna Jefferson (Kelsey Abele).  Mark turns his film talents on his roommate, HIV-positive musician Roger Davis, played by the charismatic David Perilstein who is determined to write one great song and whose girlfriend had committed suicide due to being HIV positive. He falls for Mimi Marquez (Leah Ricketts), a drug-addicted exotic dancer, whose beauty, grace and lovely singing voice are a pleasure to behold. Other characters in Mark’s world involve cross-dressing street drummer, Angel Dumont Schunard, with an energetic Broadway-bound performance by Blake Beaver, who is attracted to a gay former philosophy professor Tom Collins (Ken Fox). Other highlights are Taylor’s show-stopping performance of  “Over the Moon” and her duet with the talented Kelsey in “Take Me or Leave Me.” All of these gifted underdogs have turned against Roger and Mark’s former friend, Benjamin Coffin III (Ben Denzer) who owns the building where Mark and Roger are living and has broken his promise to allow them to live in their loft rent free. The musical has many moments of pathos and glimmers of hope amidst this world of drugs and illness. Individual members of the chorus (The Bohemians) also had knockout singing voices.  And who can resist the show’s beautiful anthem, “Seasons of Love.” “525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes – how do you measure, measure a year?”

The students at Barstow did a laudable job of recreating an East Village multi-level loft, with graffiti and concert posters on the walls. What was especially rewarding about the show was how the school used the musical as an opportunity to raise money for a shelter for homeless teenagers being built for Synergy Services, Kansas City Free Clinic, Harvesters, and to collect blankets and coats for the homeless.