Report: "Rent" To End Broadway Run

Hit Musical To Close After More Than 12 Years

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NEW YORK, Jan. 16, 2008

(AP)  "Rent," the acclaimed musical chronicle of counterculture life and death in Manhattan's East Village, will close in June after more than a dozen years on Broadway.

The rock-inflected reinterpretation of the Puccini opera "La Boheme" will be the seventh-longest-running Broadway show in history when it closes after its evening performance June 1, The New York Times reported.

The musical reeled in four Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize, grossed more than $280 million on Broadway and $330 million more in productions elsewhere, spun off a 2005 movie, and fostered the careers of actors including Taye Diggs and Jesse L. Martin.

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Photos: "Rent" Ten Years Later

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Co-producer Jeffrey Seller told the newspaper that ticket sales slowed noticeably in the fall. He did not immediately return a telephone call early Wednesday from The Associated Press.

Seller told the Times the show faced competition from such newer musicals as "Legally Blonde: The Musical," which opened in April 2007, and "Spring Awakening," which opened in December 2006.

Still, when "Rent" opened, "I couldn't have foreseen that we'd get to five years," he said.

"Rent" examines the struggles of a group of artists and outcasts in the late 1980s and early 1990s, celebrating their pluck, camaraderie and commitment to self-expression while dealing frankly with drug addiction, AIDS, and loss.

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