There's a lot that's revolutionary about the Rent, but on May 4 the Broadway musical adhered to one timeless tradition: The show must go on.
At 4:30 PM that day, just as the Saturday matinee was coming down, a 48-inch water main cracked beneath Broadway and West 40th Street in Manhattan, sending millions of gallons of water cascading through the street and turning the area south of Times Square into Lake Broadway.
Traffic lights lost power, subways stopped running, taxi and limo traffic was snarled, and the the Nederlander Theatre at West 41st Street, where Rent is playing, had no running water.
But spokesman Richard Kornberg said the sets were not damaged, so Rent which had, the previous day, been named Best Musical of 1995-96 by the Drama League, went on with the show for the evening performance -- the first Saturday night of its Broadway run.
Talk about "La Vie Boheme."
