There’s Only Us, There’s Only This: RENT’s Gloriously Unhinged 30th Anniversary

You know when you get that uncomfortable feeling that you don’t know what’s going on? Like ‘oh, I’ve missed a key element here’, and you start looking around to see who might be able to clue you in?

The bad news is that’s how I felt watching the RENT 30th anniversary concert in support of Broadway Cares. The good news is how immediately apparent it was that everyone felt the same way – and by everyone, I mostly mean ‘everyone onscreen, and also everyone watching.’

The show was one-night-only in New York, but you could buy a livestream ticket, which I obviously jumped at. I was a little nervous because the show was supposed to start at 8… well, maybe 7, depending on which site you were reading, but no, definitely 8 – and I wasn’t sure if my early-evening obligations would have wound up by then. But I shouldn’t have worried.

The wide-ranging, free-form pre-show involving several hosts, most notably Ricki Lake, talking to the many, many cast members and theatre luminaries on site (more on that later), and absolutely no supers or identifying visuals, didn’t seem to have a set end time. At one point I noticed a countdown clock that said there were less than two minutes until showtime…

…but at the end of that those two minutes, I was…watching Ricki Lake talking to Taye Diggs? Neither of whom seemed that concerned about the timing?

Eventually, nine minutes after the supposed start time, we see the hosts being told in real time that the show’s about to begin… and, understandably, they seem utterly stunned to hear it. Why wouldn’t they be? This concert was many things, most of them glorious, but ‘smooth’ or ‘polished’ are not words I would use.

That’s partly because of the format, I think – the concert was not strictly an original-cast revival, though many of them were in attendance; instead the idea was that each role would be played by many different performers – lots of the original cast like Idina, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Anthony Rapp, and of course, Taye Diggs; plus many ‘Big RENT names’ like Neil Patrick Harris, Wilson Cruz, Jai Rodriguez or Tracie Thoms, all coming and going and giving us the overall vibe of RENT… let’s say in conversation with the actual show.

Sometimes this was amazing – Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp have an easy rapport that feels like they never left each others’ sides. Sometimes it was funny or adorable, like when a performer grinned ruefully as they chose a lower note than one they might’ve hit 30 years ago, or when Pascal admitted, mid-“Light My Candle”, that he forgot his match backstage and needed someone to bring it to him. 

But sometimes it was just someone’s mic broken or not turned on in a key line – especially in big moments like “RENT” or “La Vie Boheme” where everyone got one line, and sometimes we missed them altogether. And as for “Today For You…”? I have no idea what was supposed to be happening in that number. Well, no, that’s not true. I do.

They’d staged it like a duet between two performers playing Angel, only nobody told the entire stage crew, somehow? I have to assume that’s what happened. Because one Angel had a big loud mic and a follow spot; the other Angel was singing, a capella, into the darkness, which gave the impression of a mouse with musical theatre ambitions. (Ratatouille on Broadway – yes, it’s brilliant, do not steal my idea goddammit.)

(Please note the actors playing Mark & Collins, downstage L, trying desperately to look at the vocalist doing his DAMNDEST on the stairs, completely IN THE DARK)

On the one hand, this is live theatre and the show must (and did) go on. On the other hand, nobody made this mistake when Idina was onstage, you know? Well, except for Idina, who kept asking the other Maureens on either side of her “...is it me now? Is it really my turn? Again?”  

But the thing is – and if you watched, or if you love RENT, you already know this – none of that mattered. Forgetting lines and entrances, missed lighting or audio cues, and the apparent 8 total hours of rehearsal they had. (Ricki Lake tried to ask follow-up questions about this at intermission, but everyone, up to and including Lin-Manuel Miranda, blew past her. In fairness, it was mid-show? Why would anyone go outside to do an interview? The mind boggles). What mattered was the feeling, and I’ve been thinking all morning about how to explain to those who don’t know:

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It’s the feeling. It’s the everyone-together part, where the ‘main’ cast and the ensemble are all one, and everyone knows not just their parts, but everyone’s, and so it becomes like singing school songs or Christmas carols, passing the feelings from one generation to another. RENT has call-outs and orchestrated Moos. It has musical jokes and callbacks, and amazingly, for a show that was set in the early 1990s and was expressly about the rampant, then-deadly AIDS crisis, a lot of it is very, very relevant today: corporate greed, youths who could GAF about ‘getting ahead’ because why, and loving those who are close to you because who has the time or money to go anywhere? I don’t know if Jonathan Larson imagined those themes being quite so relevant in 2026, but here we are… which meant that at times, the multi-generational multi-cast motif was almost a dual-sided portal, showing the past and future at the same time – like this this version of “Without You”, with Aaron Tveit singing Roger and both Daphne Rubin-Vega and Rachel Zegler as Mimi:

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It’s beyond certain when Tveit and Zegler were growing up, they would have dreamed of being in this show. Of having the semi-religious, extremely communal feeling of everyone sharing every joke and aside within the songs, and the front-to-back energy of a sung-through musical*.

It was bumpy, it was rough, it was as unpolished as Maureen’s show in the parking lot, but it was immediate and important and reminded us – reminded me, and I needed reminding, that polishing is endless and that there is in fact No Day But Today. It took me, not all the way back to the optimism I felt the first time I fell in love with RENT, but a lot closer to that teenage girl, and the dreams she had for a life surrounded by a group of creative friends that, despite everything, I’m really lucky to be living and sharing with you all. Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.

Speaking of No Day But Today, the show is in theory available for the remainder of 24 hours since last night’s 8pm (...ish) drop, but messaging is a bit cloudy. This link is your best bet, the money goes to Broadway Cares, and you can watch it over and over again, like I am absolutely doing for the third time as soon as I press send on this post. You won’t regret it, and you will find you still know all the words to Joanne’s parents’ voicemail. “Oh and Kitten, Have a Merry—” “--AND A BRAAAAAAAA!”

(*I’ve decided that people who hate musicals hate them because, in their words, ‘The story keeps having to stop so everyone can sing and dance, again! Ugh!’. Not that people who disdain our art form need this generosity, but if you’re trying to get a non-musical person into Musical Theatre, I strongly recommend starting with a sung-through show, where there’s no stop-and-start because the whole *thing* is a song. Let me know how it goes.)