This Day in Theater History (Death of ‘Rent’ Composer Jonathan Larson)

Jan. 25, 1996— Composer Jonathan Larson died of an undiagnosed aortic aneurism at his home in Manhattan, just after giving an interview about his new groundbreaking rock musical, Rent, and on the day of its first preview performance off-Broadway at the New York Theater Workshop. 

After seven years in gestation, the adaptation of Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Boheme, with a signature song called “Seasons of Love,” was about to embark on different kinds of seasons in short order: a season of mourning, a season of triumph, and a season of litigation. 

Critics were soon hailing the musical for its songs and topical treatment of issues like AIDS (the late-20th century counterpart to the deadly disease of La Boheme, tuberculosis). Before long, crowds would compel the production to move to a Broadway venue, where—like Sunday in the Park With George, one of the great musicals of Larson’s hero and role model, Stephen Sondheim—the show would end up winning the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. 

On opening night, Larson’s sister told The New York Times: “This is the best and worst moment of my life. This play was Jonathan. It is totally my brother.” 

While the musical certainly reflected the composer’s life and environment as a penniless artist struggling to make ends meet in Alphabet City, other voices soon rose to claim that the work owed heavily to them as well as to himself.

In her 1998 book Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS and Marketing of Gay America, lesbian writer-activist Sarah Schulman claimed that there were scenes and events in the musical that derived from her novel of eight years before, People in Trouble. 

Though Schulman decided not to sue for copyright infringement, dramaturge Lynn Thomson chose a different course. Hired to work with Larson to shape his play by the New York Theater Workshop, Thomson sued the composer’s estate after his death, saying she wrote a number of its lyrics, as much as a quarter of its script, and was entitled to a portion of the show’s swelling royalties. The case was closely watched in theater circles because of the chance for a legal precedent that would fundamentally redefine the role of the dramaturge in the making of a show. 

Though a judge ruled that Thomson had contributed some copyrightable material, she was not entitled to a claim of authorship or, consequently, a share of the royalties—a judgment upheld in appeals court. 

But Thomson filed a second suit two years later. The two parties reached a settlement in September 1998 that included an undisclosed payment to Thomson and a credit for her as dramaturge on the show’s playbill. 

After 12 years and a film version in 2005, the musical was playing to dwindling audiences by the time I saw it last month. I was not surprised, therefore, when the show’s producers recently announced its closing date —June 1, 2008, when it will become the seventh-longest-running show in Broadway history. (I will be offering a review of the show soon on this blog.)