Rent, Jonathan Larson’s pop opera inspired by Puccini’s La Boheme, returns to Chicago once again, through May 2 at the Shubert Theatre, 22 West Monroe. In Larson’s take, the poets and painters of 1830’s Paris are now 1990’s video artists, dancers and druggies living in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Most of them are HIV+, and all of them are monumentally self-destructive and self-absorbed … but they do have attitude, style and tunes aplenty. Larson died (of a brain aneurysm) the day before Rent opened Off-Broadway. Had he lived, he would have chopped 15 minutes out of it. (312) 902-1400 (Ticketmaster); $21-$68.