Jonathan Larson, the electrifyingly talented composer of this relocation of the story of La Boheme to contemporary Lower East Side New York, never lived to see the miraculous success of his creation: he died of an aortic aneurysm at age 36, on the day of the show’s final Off-Broadway dress rehearsal. The central message of the show, that there is no day but today and that is what we have to live for, immediately acquired an unbearable poignancy; but the show’s success is a living testament to his talent, and also to what we have lost. So the power and passion of Larson lives on, in Michael Greif’s powerful and passionate production about young lives haunted by the specter of mortality as they are lived in the shadows cast by AIDS, poverty and homelessness.