The Fox Network will broadcast a live production of Jonathan Larson’s musical Rent this Sunday, January 27, from 8 to 11 PM EST (8 to 11 on tape delay for those in the Pacific Time Zone), the Network announced. You may have seen previous Fox live musical broadcasts such as Grease, The Wiz, Peter Pan and Sound of Music.
Rent follows the struggles of seven artists who struggle with poverty, drugs, social disruption and the AIDs epidemic in New York’s East Village. Based on Puccini’s La Bohème, the musical won four Tonys and the Pulitzer Prize. Larson, 36, died before the show was fully produced.
“It is definitely different. It is a musical drama. The stakes are life and death,” producer Marc Platt told USA Today who was behind those previous musicals, along with NBC’s “Jesus Christ Superstar.” “As the years have gone by with ‘Rent,’ and while there was a very fine film, there was a question of whether it could be given a new context and revitalized in a way.”
Platt also mentioned some tweaking and the removal of expletives from the lyrics, to get approval from the censors.
20th Century Fox Television is producing the show, with members of the Larson family serving as two of the eight executive producers: his father, Allen Larson, and his sister Julia, producer of “The Drew Carey Show”.
The Fox production will feature Kiersey Clemons as Joanne Jefferson, Tony Award Winner Brandon Dixon Victor as Tom Collins, Jordan Fisher as Mark Cohen and Vanessa Hudgens as Maureen Johnson. Michael Greif (Dear Evan Hansen) will direct the stage version, and Alex Rudzinski, who produced the concert version of Jesus Christ Superstar, will oversee the television aspects of the production.
Jayne Blanchard will review for DC Theatre Scene.
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