Dazzling Rubin-Vega
Is Life Of Broadway's "Rent" Party Still Fresh

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New York ---"Welcome to the dungeon," says Daphne Rubin-Vega, the fiery exotic dancer of ``Rent" ---one of the out-of-nowhere stars who have made it the hottest ticket on Broadway ---leading her visitor downstairs to the dressing rooms under the Nederlander Theatre. She's chuckling about the "dungeon" but not entirely kidding. In the narrow stairway, pipes dip low from the overhead gloom. The air echoes with guitar riffs from the "Rent" band, warming up for the next performance. One chemical-blond man from the ensemble bursts in, grinning, and announces his readiness with a deliberate, resounding belch. It's a loose crew, these "Rent"-oids. As well they should be: They're the toast of Gotham. The intrepid artists were unknown when the rock opera ---a raw, gritty, thrilling profile of young bohemians, modeled after "La Boheme" ---jumped from off- Broadway to Broadway in April, winning the Tony Award for best musical and spinning off a cast album, a film-in-the-making and a touring show now in Boston (no decision has been reached on an Atlanta engagement). One of the most remarkable rocket-rise stories is Rubin-Vega. She's earned raves for her full-throttle, but sweetly winning, portrayal of Mimi, a HIV-positive heroin addict and kinky dancer who learns about genuine love in the shadow of death. For a young woman raised in a tough section of Greenwich Village, it's a dizzying trip to find herself a role model for Latina girls, receiving a congratulatory letter from Ernesto Balldares, the president of Panama (where she was born). The surest sign of her hotness, however, is that Rubin-Vega's voice can be heard on the loudspeakers of Bloomingdale's, blaring out her she-wolf howl on "Out Tonight" to summon shoppers to the "Rent Collection" of clothes she helped to popularize. "A lot of Mimi's clothes came straight out of my own closet, like the leopard pants, and then they became, like, this symbol of `Rent,' " says Rubin-Vega, smiling and shaking her head at the surreal vicissitudes of fashion. She seems a billion miles from Bloomie's as she sits in a bunkerlike room that several actresses share for between-scene costume changes. Rubin-Vega seems both fragile and tough, a petite woman with a frizzy mantle of brunette hair, skin-tight jeans and a sleeveless black top that shows off her sculpted-muscle arms. As the band boomed overhead, Rubin-Vega sounded off on . . . Her age: "I'm 27. No, wait! (Thinks a moment). I'm 28. Yech." How she joined "Rent": "I don't like the tradition (of Broadway musicals). But when I heard about the spin on `La Boheme' and this wild character Mimi, it was like, `What is that about?' I knew the show would be fierce, but I had no idea the rest of the world would react like this." Her knowledge of Mimi's world: "A lot of the performance is from experience and from my friends ---a big old collage. I don't have AIDS, but I have friends who do. Some appreciate life more after their `sentence.' We don't know when we're going to die ---nobody knew that better than Jonathan (Larson, the show's writer-composer, who died at 35 just before the off-Broadway premiere). The "Rent" myth: "The show became mythical because Jonathan died, and it's become sicker and sicker! The myth objectifies him, but he was a human being . . . so innocent, so pure in his faith that the show would succeed." Who's come backstage to congratulate her: Paul Newman, Lauren Bacall, Liza Minnelli, Tori Amos, "Tom (Cruise) and Nicole (Kidman). . . . It's so incredible to have Ralph Fiennes, like, blush! For Demi Moore to rub (chests) with you! For Jodi Foster to say, `Don' t tell me how fierce I am, because you're fierce!' " The allure of the role: "We don't play `careful.' We push the envelope with our voices, our emotions, our bodies. I explore the deepest, darkest, most vulnerable, powerful, powerless places in me. Everything was a pleasure ---even the terror." - Occupational hazards: "I'll never get all of Mimi's glitter out of my pores. My boyfriend is a corporate lawyer and at meetings he has to explain why there's glitter on his suits."