The musical “Rent” comes to the Durham Center for the Performing Arts beginning Monday. It’s ironic that a musical written to protest New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to clean up his city is one of the first events at a building built to help do the same for Durham.
It’s hard to imagine now, but Times Square only a few years ago was full of hookers, bums, squeegee shakedown artists and porn theaters. Blogger Stage Right at the excellent new blog Big Hollywood saw the same production recently and upset his date when he asked:
Why are these punks spending all their time playing with their camera and guitar. They should get a job and pay the poor guy who owns the building. They owe him rent for the past year for God’s sake!
The musical’s evil character is the landlord who wants to turn his building into condos and help improve his little area of Manhattan. Benny was a metaphor for Guiliani, who wanted to do the same for New York City. Thankfully, Guiliani succeeded. Stage Right again:
Although the New York Times assured us that by stopping the squeegee men from pounding on car windows at stop lights we’d be ushering in a new fascist order, somehow, Giuliani was able to enforce the quality of life agenda. The crime dripped away from America’s #1 urban tourist spot and suddenly, the investments started coming in. Disney came to 42nd St. Nasdaq was on Times Square. New hotels, new restaurants, new night life. No peddlers, no scary guys whispering “crack, smack†to you when you pass them on the street. All of this was BAD to the New York left!
That’s a fate Reyn Bowman and Bill Kalkhof would love to see for Durham. So, while you watch the deadbeat artist characters in “Rent,” keep in mind that they were desperately wrong about Times Square then, and they continue to be wrong today. But enjoy the show.
