Despite his highly publicized encounter with the disgraced Kevin Spacey that ended badly in Court, it looks like Rent Star ANTHONY RAPP will have his happy ending after all.
51-year-old Rapp has been acting since childhood but he got his big break some 17 years playing Mark Cohen in Jonathan Larson’s musical RENT. The show became a cultural phenomenon and was a career-defining moment for Rapp. Larson tragically died the night before the Show opened off-Broadway and even though it went in to win a Pulitzer, Rapp was mourning Larson’s death and also coming to terms with his mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis.
Although Rapp would go on to also find success in Star Trek Discovery (as Lt. Paul Stamets, one of the franchise’s first gay principal characters) he poured his heart out about his grief in a best-selling memoir Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss and the Musical Rent”. It was actually published some 17 years ago, and he’s been performing versions of this stage adaptation for some 15 years. He even released a Without You Album in 2012.
Now Rapp has developed it into a one-man musical that is a hybrid of a rock concert and a poignant monologue, performed on a minimalist set that evokes Manhattan’s East Village in the mid-1990s. In Without You Rapp reflects on seasons of love and loss and has been receiving some excellent reviews for his performance. ….. the NY Times summarised it so ‘you would have to be a stone not to be moved’.
Plus the happy ending is also off stage for Rapp as last month, he and fiancé Ken Ithiphol became first-time fathers to a son.
You don’t have to be a ‘Renthead’ to enjoy the talented Rapp’s body of work …… especially Without You ….. but we will always applaud his performance on stage ….. and off, where he is after all an unlikely queer icon.
Through April 30 at New World Stages, Manhattan https://withoutyoumusical.com/
Labels: 2023, Anthony Rapp, Manahattan, one man show, Without You
