Off Broadway Revival of 'Rent' to Close Well, at least it got longer than 525,600 minutes. "Rent," the popular musical about the lives and loves of downtown New York artists in the era of AIDS, will close its Off Broadway run at New World Stages on Sept. 9, a little more than a year after the production opened there, its press representatives said on Tuesday. The Broadway version of "Rent," Jonathan Larson's Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning update of Puccini's "La Bohème," had been closed for about three years (following a 12-year-long run at the Nederlander Theater) when Jeffrey Seller, a lead producer of the original 1996 production, announced that he would present a revival at New World Stages. That downsized "Rent" opened last year on Aug. 11, amid a small trend of other Broadway shows (including "Avenue Q," of which Mr. Seller is also a producer) that were moving to less expensive Off Broadway houses. Reviewing the Off Broadway production of "Rent" in The New York Times, Ben Brantley wrote that its ensemble cast never seemed "to feel truly at home" and looked "as if they had taken over the show for a couple of months of fun, as they might an older sibling's house on Fire Island, and are now hesitant to treat it as their own." At its closing "Rent" will have played 32 previews and 450 regular performances at New World Stages.