The wistful time capsule of idealism, big dreams

Rent

is back in town, at the Academy of Music, and it seems that a funny thing happened on the way to the millennium: Though AIDS is no longer the instant death sentence it was when Jonathan Larsen first adapted Puccini's

La Boheme

into an ACT UP-era rock musical, everything else has pretty much ended up right where it started.

Numbers of homeless are again on the rise, neighborhoods have been gentrified beyond affordability, and the economy's back in the tank. "La Vie Boheme," the cast sings. Do we have a choice?

Here's something else that stayed the same: Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp are still talk-singing the roles they originated Off-Broadway in 1996 - Roger, the HIV-positive musician who falls in love with (sort of) doomed Mimi, and Mark, Rent's documentary-filmmaking narrator. So let's just get the big question out of the way. Have they held up?

Well, yes and no. Both still look boyish enough to pass for anarcho-artsy squat-dwellers, but it takes some extra effort for them to pull off those longer notes, and by the time Rent's finale, "Your Eyes," rolls around, Pascal's voice is as ragged as the company his character keeps. Nonetheless, the pair still summon up the passion they did back in the '90s, when they helped turn the show into a bona fide cultural phenomenon complete with Rent-heads who followed it from town to town, camping out to score a last-minute $20 seat in those legendary front two rows.

A decade or so on, the piece has acquired a tarnished sheen that makes one appreciate its continued success, maybe even more so than in the days of its debut. The glitter in Mimi's hair, visible mikes, payphones, performance artists, compulsive mentions of Doc Martens - all combine in a wistful time capsule of Generation X and its idealistic ephemera. And this production has none of the emptiness common in many touring shows. It feels like the real deal, with a cast that believes in its message and brings to it a fierce immediacy.

There are no fiercer characters in Rent than drag queen Angel (Justin Johnston) and junkie Mimi (Lexi Lawson), and both deliver the goods with acrobatic dancing and soaring vocals. But Lawson can also turn on the sweetness, as she does with a shimmering "Light My Candle."

The company isn't perfect, however, and with decibels turned up near the tinnitus range, Nicolette Hart's Maureen screeching her way through "Take Me or Leave Me" is downright painful. The antidote? Gwen Stewart, the original soloist in "Seasons of Love," whose vocal richness takes the song back to those glory days when Rent was introducing a generation to the transporting power of musical theater.

Maybe that's why, even though its chief villain has been partly subdued, even though its "never sell out" idealism rings a bit precious in an Internet era that allows us to sell ourselves however we like, this show - which only closed on Broadway in September - still resonates.

We're living in the age of hope and a prayer, and if Rent is about anything, it's about dreaming big. Larsen provided a carpe diem reminder that even during the country's economic and sociological troughs, no one can take away your dreams. It's a classic theme for a musical, but targeted at a new audience, having assumed its place among the genre's immortals.