Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent (17 page)

But, again, we managed, beginning with our eulogies, the words of which could so easily have been said about Jonathan. “You always said you were so lucky that we were all friends,” Idina said, her voice cracking. Then she looked right up to the sky and said, “But it was us, baby, who were the lucky ones.”

And at last, Jesse slowly took his place at the edge of the stage, clutching his coat. His kind, handsome face illuminated only by a pin spot, his big brown eyes deeply mournful and loving and humane, he began his song to Angel and, tonight at least, to Jonathan.

The room was completely silent and still, except for Jesse’s resonant, heartbreaking voice and Tim’s accompanying, soulful piano. More and more tears fell down my face, and I could feel my fellow cast members crying too, which again made me cry all the more. I couldn’t even bear to look out at the house, because I knew what I’d find there, and before I knew it, it was my turn to sing with the rest of the ensemble, and I joined the line at the edge of the stage and did my utmost to produce some kind of sound. But no sound wanted to come out, my throat was choked. I saw the sorrow in the faces of the audience members in front of me and my heart broke all the more—I could not believe that we were here right now singing this song for such a terrible reason—and I tried to sing through my sobs, but I could only manage a few notes, my voice croaking through the climax of the song:

Jesse amazingly held us all together, never wavering, and ending with a wrenching wail that echoed through the theatre, until the light on him faded to black, and the audience exploded once again with an extraordinary, cathartic cheer.

I gulped down my grief as much as I could in the transition into “Halloween,” and actually regained the power of my voice just enough, as I sang the questions we were all asking ourselves that night:

Even though I was shaking as I sang alone onstage, I was finally able to channel everything I was feeling into the song, rather than be overpowered by it, although it was definitely a struggle. But I made it through to the end:

And then we were into “Goodbye Love,” with its explosive fights between Daphne and Adam, and Idina and Fredi, which Jesse broke up with another set of lyrics that absolutely could have been about what we were all experiencing that night:

And we all joined in on the final line, singing through our tears:

Adam was a rock during our fight, and we were able to hold it together through the end of the scene. But when Daphne began wailing out,
“Goodbye, love, goodbye,”
I wished I weren’t standing off to the side all alone, that I had someone to steady me before my knees gave out from all of their shaking.

But then I had “What You Own,” and I attacked it ferociously, pouring my exhaustion and grief into every note, letting the fierce propulsion of the band launch me into my angry, sad howls.

The audience cheered again at the end of that song, and I flowed, spent, into the finale with the rest of the cast, helplessly standing off to the side once again as Adam sang his love song “Your Eyes” to Daphne, and then joining in with everyone else in the final chorus. Again, we were singing about Jonathan:

Again and again, the men repeated that refrain,
“No day but today,”
while the women repeated over and over,
“I die without you.”
We were singing for ourselves and Jonathan and his friends and his parents, and when the song ended, his friends and his parents leaped to their feet, raising their hands above their heads, their faces both released and terribly sad. We bowed, and bowed again, and then made our way backstage, where we silently embraced each other, exhausted but uplifted. As we quietly busied ourselves with taking off our headsets and gathering our things together, I realized there was no sound coming from anywhere in the theatre, and I opened the backstage door to find the entire audience sitting in absolute, perfect stillness and silence. No one moved, no one spoke. They all just sat, some staring straight ahead, others sitting with their heads in their hands, still others sitting huddled together. Afraid to move myself, afraid to disrupt this moment, I walked across the stage as quietly as I could and found a group of actors from the studio production and sat with them, looking down at my hands, feeling the crushing, enormous silence of over one hundred fifty people bearing down on me. I have no idea how long we all sat together saying absolutely nothing, but it felt like forever. Finally, a male voice from the back of the theatre called out, “Thank you, Jonathan Larson,” and with that utterance the spell was broken, and the group began to move and breathe again.

Christina found me then, her face alight and pained. “I don’t know how you all did that,” she said. “That was…that was incredible.”

“I don’t know how we did it either,” I replied. “We had to.”

“Well, I won’t ever forget this night.”

We said goodbye, and I found Al and Nan, standing somewhat dazedly in the middle of the house. Al’s eyes were surprisingly clear, his manner intense, as he firmly took my hand in his.

“You all were amazing,” he said. “Now we’ve got to make this show a hit. We’ve got to make this show a hit.”

“We’ll do our best,” I said, and I knew that all that was now left of his son was this show, and I resolved to honor that. I think we all did from that night forward.

Our work over the next two weeks of previews was urgent and intense. Michael and Tim had the unenviable task of second-guessing what cuts Jonathan would have been willing to make (there was no question in anyone’s mind that Jonathan had been looking forward to revising the show during previews), and they presented each proposed cut with respect and sensitivity. And, inevitably, every cut they proposed made sense. We had to believe that Jonathan would have been pleased.

Our subsequent audiences were never as responsive as the one on the night of the sing-through, but they seemed to love the show nonetheless, and I remained cautiously optimistic about our prospects with the critics. My greatest fear was that they might not be willing to open themselves up to the show’s enormous heart, which was the source of most of its power. But I did my best to leave those anxieties at a low murmur so I could concentrate on the work.

Jonathan’s memorial service was scheduled for a Sunday morning a week and a half after his death, and I arrived early, along with the rest of the cast, Michael, and Tim. We assembled at the off-Broadway Minetta Lane Theatre, coincidentally situated next to a restaurant called La Bohème, on a small street in the West Village. Jonathan’s memorial had been announced the day before in the
Times,
so the Workshop had been deemed too tiny to contain the crowds that were expected to attend.

Our job as a cast was to sing “Seasons of Love,” the reprise of “I’ll Cover You,” and “La Vie Boheme,” and Adam was to sing “One Song Glory.” We quickly ran through the numbers for a sound check, and then milled around as we waited for everyone to arrive.

I didn’t recognize most of the somber faces that poured into the theatre, and as I sat and watched them come in and quietly take their seats, I realized that their grief was thicker and fresher, somehow, than ours. It struck me that those of us involved in the show had actually benefited from the nightly catharsis our performances had afforded us. We had been able to be active with Jonathan’s memory in a way that allowed us to process our grief, while his friends and family and acquaintances had been left to their own devices. The show had become a healing conduit for us, and this memorial service would serve that purpose for everyone else.

One by one, Jonathan’s friends stood on the stage, in front of a series of slides of Jonathan, and introduced one of his songs, or shared stories of their lives with him. I sat next to Daphne, holding her hand. I had cried so much over the past week and a half, onstage and off, that my tears felt dried up, but when I heard Jonathan’s song “Destination Sky”—written for a children’s video entitled
Away We Go!
and sung by a young boy in a pure, sweet, angelic voice—I was instantly shattered by its simple, delicate melody and lyrics:

I squeezed Daphne’s hand tightly as I wept. I couldn’t stand such a light in the world as Jonathan being gone, I couldn’t stand all of the songs he hadn’t yet written never being heard, I couldn’t stand that only now I felt like I was really getting to know him as a full human being, now when it was too late. I couldn’t stand that I would never be able to tell him how much I loved being a part of his show, how much it had already given to me, how much the people who witnessed his work embraced it. As much as I’d tried to make peace with his absence, as much as all of us in the cast told each other and ourselves that he lived on in the words and music he’d left behind, the truth was that he was dead, he was
dead,
and there was no denying how fucked that was, how wrong.

And then the song ended, and the fresh, intense wave of grief and anger that had washed over me began to fade, and my head began to clear, and I felt once again a moment of peace, of acceptance. Grief was, after all, just as Cy had told us it would be: unpredictable and frightening and cathartic, sometimes all at once. But as painful as this time had been, in some ways I had never felt more engaged with my life, more receptive to and appreciative of the people around me, or more exposed to the complexities and depths of my own emotional core. Life had suddenly become incontestably immediate to me, necessary and vital, and that was something for which I was profoundly grateful.

O
pening night was on February 13, 1996, ten days after Jonathan’s memorial service. I was still feeling cautiously optimistic about our prospects with the critics, who had all attended the last few preview performances so their reviews could appear promptly after opening night. My friends’ reactions to the show were encouraging, and the audience at our final preview, mostly consisting of fellow actors and theatre people, was our most enthusiastic yet. It was after this show that the most surprising response came, from an actor friend who rushed up to me as I emerged from backstage and shouted, “Oh my god, you are all so fucking sexy! I wanted to fuck you all!!!” If that wasn’t a positive endorsement, I didn’t know what was.

Our opening night crowd was relatively dormant, as opening night crowds tend to be; everyone is nervous, waiting for the reviews, hoping that all goes well, so it’s rare to find an exuberant, free, generous opening night crowd. We didn’t give a shoddy performance that night, by any means, but we also didn’t give our best show.

The party was held in the rehearsal room, but I didn’t feel like I could let loose until after I saw the
Times.
Periodically, I tracked down Richard Kornberg, our press agent, and asked him, “Is it here yet?” He smiled knowingly and forgivingly at me and replied, “Don’t worry, I will tell you when it is,” and I aimlessly wandered around the party, picking at the food and sipping at my drink, unable to enjoy myself.

Finally Richard came up to me, grabbed my arm, and pulled me off to the side. “It’s in,” he whispered, “and it’s great.” Flooded with relief, I followed him into a downstairs room where the only copy sat—it was kept away from the party because some people wouldn’t want to read it even if it was a rave—and devoured Ben Brantley’s review, reading as quickly as my eyes would allow. My worst fear, that he and other critics wouldn’t embrace the show’s heart, was immediately laid to rest as line after line affirmed what I so strongly believed about the show, calling it “exhilarating” and “vigorous,” and saying that it “rushes forward on an electric current of emotion.” He also said flattering things about the entire cast, singling several of us out (always a good thing for our egos), but, disappointingly, he disparaged Michael’s brilliant contributions. He did include a nice mention of Tim and the band, however, saying that they “lovingly and precisely interpreted” Jonathan’s score. And then, as if he hadn’t already made it clear how much he loved our show, he took his review over the top with its final sentences: “People who complain about the demise of the American musical have simply been looking in the wrong places. Well done, Larson.”

I laid the paper down and looked right up at Richard. “That’s what we needed,” I said.

“Yes,” Richard replied, “that’s what we needed.”

The next day, our entire run at the Workshop sold out within hours. Such was the power of a rave in the
Times.
We quickly extended our run for two more weeks, and promptly sold that out. Rumors began to fly around the cast and in the press about our moving to Broadway, and were confirmed a week after opening night by our commercial producers, who pledged to make inexpensive tickets available so young people would be able to afford the show. Soon, and with great rapidity, television crews descended on our theatre, and we all became adept at sitting in front of a camera for CNN or CBS or ABC or VH-1 and talking about our little show that had become such a huge, overnight smash. Print media joined in as well, with editors calling some or all of us in for lavish photo shoots. Within a matter of a few weeks, we’d traveled around town to various photographers’ studios to pose for the
New York Times, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Time Out New York, Out,
and
Harper’s Bazaar.
And night after night, we showed up at the theatre, where long lines for cancellations twisted down East Fourth Street, and performed the show to increasingly enthusiastic crowds. Celebrities began showing up, too, although we didn’t get to meet many of them; the theatre had no easy access to the backstage area, so the celebrities tended to dash out after the curtain call to avoid being inundated by crowds of admirers. Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman were the first ones to stay and say hello, and the cast surrounded them afterwards, giddily snapping pictures, shaking their hands, and drinking in their praise for our show. They had come to celebrate Rhea’s birthday, so we spontaneously serenaded her with an R&B-influenced rendition of the birthday song, complete with intricate gospel harmonies, which seemed to thrill them.

All of this attention felt insane and yet deserved; we had all worked so hard to get the show where it was, and Jonathan had in some ways lost his life for it, pouring everything that he was into its creation. But the media machine had its own relentless, cyclonic energy, feeding off of itself, swallowing everything in its path, with the story about Jonathan’s death sometimes overshadowing the story about his work. This seemed like a minor trade-off, however, if it resulted in more and more people finding out about Jonathan’s words and music, thereby keeping his spirit alive that much longer.

My own personal publicity soon kicked in, with a request for an interview with the gay and lesbian newsmagazine
The Advocate.
I was pleased that they’d called; I had never been in their pages and wanted to do anything I could to raise my profile, both for the sake of my work and for the sake of gay and lesbian issues. I didn’t believe that being an out actor was detrimental to my career. On the contrary, I had come out publicly three and a half years before in my bio for
The Destiny of Me
by thanking my then-boyfriend, David. (With the best of intentions, I’d naïvely called David my “partner for life” in my bio, only to break up with him a year and a half later, a fact that led to much subsequent teasing from friends and coworkers.)
Out
had run a feature story on me a year after my coming out to coincide with the release of the film version of
Six Degrees of Separation
(in which I’d recreated my stage role), but since then my profile had been too low to merit exposure in the press, gay or otherwise. So I jumped at the chance to sit down with a reporter from
The Advocate.

Among the many subjects my interviewer and I discussed over our lunch at the Life Café was the state of my romantic life, which was currently a little confusing; I’d recently begun seeing a different ex-boyfriend, an actor named Marcus. We’d been involved with each other on and off for the past two years, although for the past year we’d been mostly off. However, as I told my interviewer, Marcus was not out publicly, nor did he ever intend to be. He so deeply, almost desperately, wanted to have a successful acting career that he refused to allow anything, including the hypothetical backlash that might result from being an out actor, to prevent it from happening. At times I’d felt as though I could never respect him for this decision, because, to me, the stakes for queer people in America, specifically young queer people, were too high for anyone with a conscience to justify remaining in the closet, especially if that someone was a public figure in a position to bring much-needed attention to queer issues. On the other hand, I recognized that each queer individual had a very personal choice to make: to reveal that aspect of his or her personal life or not to. Marcus was his own person, and I was my own person, and while I wished that he felt differently about being in the closet, I did love him, and I didn’t want our differing politics, as personal as they were, to determine the outcome of our relationship.

A few nights after my interview, and with all of these issues swirling around in my mind, I went to dinner with Marcus at Angelica’s Kitchen, one of our favorite restaurants. Inside, the dining room was quiet and mellow, and as we ate I enjoyed the glow of the restaurant’s low, soft light as it flattered Marcus’s pale, lovely features. I was feeling safe and in love and content.

And then I said, “I wanted to talk to you about opening night on Broadway.”

I felt Marcus immediately tense up, his eyes clouding over. “What about it?”

“Well, I want you to be there with me.”

He regarded me with suspicion. “Okay…”

“But you should know that there will probably be lots of press there. Lots of photographers.”

“Well, then I can’t go,” Marcus replied, firmly sitting back and waving his arms in front of him, warding me off. And with those words, and that gesture, I knew in my gut, without even a coherent thought, that there was no future for us. Tears sprang to my eyes, surprising me with their force. As much as I’d wanted to believe that I could be okay with Marcus’s choice to remain in the closet, the truth was that I wanted to share my life with him, and that meant all of my life. I wanted to hide nothing; I couldn’t live my life any other way. And if he could not stand to be seen alongside me on one of the most important nights of my life, if he couldn’t be there for me, then I couldn’t be with him. I didn’t feel any anger, though, in that moment, only sadness and a profound recognition in my heart of what was true. Suddenly, the abstract notions of personal politics had very real consequences indeed.

“I’m sorry,” I said, crying, feeling no malice, just surrender. I truly was sorry. “I can’t be with you. I’m sorry.”

Marcus iced up, chewing his hurt into his lip. “Well, if that’s the way you feel about it…” he said. We’d been down similar roads before, and he’d had similar reactions, but this time it was final.

“I really thought I could handle this, I really, really did. I thought a lot about it. But I can’t.” I tried to keep my throat from tightening up as I talked through my tears, still surprised by the intensity of my emotions. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Marcus shrugged, his mouth set tightly. “That’s okay. I’m used to it with you.”

He was right; I’d led him on, I’d opened the door to him after having closed it, only to close it again, and not for the first time. I looked away, stung.

We didn’t talk much after that, and then paid the bill and went our separate ways.

Our commercial producers had announced our move to Broadway without knowing which theatre we would be inhabiting, but soon enough they settled on the Nederlander. I thought it would be the perfect house for our show: it was the only Broadway theatre situated below Times Square, on the slightly scuzzy West Forty-first Street, and it hadn’t had a hit in many years. We’d swoop in there and clean the joint up, breathing new life into it, the same way we were breathing new life into the world of musical theatre.

Our rise to fame was happening rapidly. The
Times
devoted page after page of the March 17th edition of the Arts & Leisure section to our show, including a splashy, half-page, technicolor photo of the entire cast on its cover, miniprofiles of each one of us inside, and a thorough report on the genesis of the show and the aftereffects of Jonathan’s death. When I read through my copy, gladdened by the balanced and compassionate writing I found there, I thought,
Yes. This is right. This is what happens when you are a part of something important.

New rumors began to swirl that Jonathan would win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for writing
Rent.
I thought that he should win—his work was having more of a cultural impact than any other piece of theatre that year—but I also thought that the Pulitzer committee would not award it to him. They had given the prize to only a handful of musicals in the past, and our show was youth-oriented and popular and probably not “literary” enough.

I’d been following the news of the impending Pulitzer announcement online, so I knew that on April 9th, we’d hear whether or not Jonathan had won. When that day came, we were all in the Nederlander, working through “Christmas Bells” on our new stage. It was snowing fairly heavily outside—a highly unusual occurrence in April—while we sang the recurring motif of the number over and over again:
“And it’s beginning to snow.”
The dual snowfalls, inside the theatre and outside, made me think that Jonathan was saying hello.

As I stood onstage on one of the tables, next to Daphne and Adam, I noticed a camera crew, a couple of reporters, and our producers enter at the back of the theatre. My heart started thudding, and I whispered to Daphne, “We’re going to find out about the Pulitzer now.”

“Don’t think about it,” she whispered back, and as she said it, Kevin McCollum, one of our producers, walked to the lip of the stage and asked Michael to stop the work so he could make an announcement.

“I just wanted to let you all know,” he said, as coolly as possible, “that Jonathan Larson just received the Pulitzer Prize for
Rent.”

I made an involuntarily crazy, relieved, inarticulate, joyful sound, a kind of a sigh and cheer, and raised my hands to the ceiling, feeling so many things all at once: foolish for caring so much about a damn award, so happy that Jonathan had been recognized, and so terribly sad that he wasn’t there to receive his prize. Among the cast, there was a smattering of applause, and a few minor cheers, but overall the mood in the room was confused. Normally, in any other circumstance, we’d be able to go up to our friend who’d just won one of the most prestigious awards known to writers and give him a hearty slap on the back or a deep hug. But now we didn’t know what to do.