SOURCE: "Rent, New Musical Is Deserved Hit," in Wall Street Journal, Vol. CCXXVII, No. 46, March 6, 1996, p. A 18.

[Below, Lyons distinguishes between "Rent the phenomenon and Rent the show," claiming that the production's "artlessness is a sophisticated achievement."]

There's Rent the phenomenon and Rent the show. The phenomenon: Limousines and taxis snake through East Fourth Street, a strip of tenements and bodegas, toward the New Theater Workshop, where the new musical is the town's toast. It's an updating of Puccini's La Boheme, which, exactly a century ago, celebrated the defiant struggles of Paris bohemians. Composer-lyricist Jonathan Larson (his earlier, misfired satire on Wall Street, J.P. Morgan Saves the Nation, was actually staged on Wall Street) transposed it all to the grungy East Village—a few blocks or so east of the theater. Now, in a plot development right out of its own story, it's to move uptown in...