The Pulitzer prize-winning musical Rent will return to London this autumn in a 30th-anniversary production starring Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo in his West End debut.
The rock opera, based on Puccini’s La Bohème and set in New York’s East Village during the Aids crisis, ran for more than 5,000 performances on Broadway and won four Tony awards. Jonathan Larson, who wrote the book, music and lyrics, died aged 35 of an aortic aneurysm shortly before it opened in 1996. The musical also ran for 18 months in London, became a 2005 film and has had several major revivals including one directed by Luke Sheppard at Manchester’s Hope Mill theatre in 2020. Sheppard, who last month won an Olivier award for Paddington: The Musical, is staging the new revival, directly inspired by his Manchester production.
It is a feat for the tiny yet enterprising Hope Mill, established in Ancoats in 2015 with a £10,000 loan. It is run by a couple, Joseph Houston and William Whelton, with a particular passion for musicals. Sheppard’s original version of Rent played to socially distanced audiences during the pandemic and was streamed online. The new staging is presented by major West End players, Chris Harper Productions and Sonia Friedman Productions, in association with Hope Mill.
Matarazzo, best known as Dustin Henderson in Netflix sci-fi series Stranger Things, will take the role of Mark, a film-maker who documents his friends’ lives. Matarazzo has appeared in several musicals in the US, including Sweeney Todd, Dear Evan Hansen, Godspell and Into the Woods. (His Stranger Things co-star Sadie Sink made her own West End debut this year in Romeo and Juliet which runs until 20 June.)
Further casting for Rent is yet to be announced. The show has choreography by Tom Jackson Greaves, who worked on the National Theatre’s current version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and costume design by Gabriella Slade, who collaborated with Sheppard on Paddington: The Musical and the recent immersive revival of Starlight Express.
Harper and Friedman said they were “completely exhilarated” by the 2020 version, which “felt immediate, emotional and utterly alive”. They added: “Jonathan Larson’s musical remains as powerful and resonant as ever, and Luke has found a way to honour its legacy while making it feel thrillingly fresh for today’s audiences.”
Sheppard said: “Directing the show at the Hope Mill theatre was a transformative experience and we were overwhelmed by the audience response. The opportunity to reimagine that production on a larger scale is a dream come true, bringing West End audiences up close to the heartfelt emotion and raw energy that powers this seminal musical. This is Rent in the hands of a new generation of performers who love and adore this piece.”
Rent, which features the songs Light My Candle, Out Tonight and Seasons of Love, is “a gateway show” for many musical-theatre fans, Sheppard told the Guardian in 2020. “It always celebrated inclusion so it reaches very widely across sexuality and gender identity, touching people in specific ways.” The plot also considers gentrification and the difficulty of making a living in the arts.
Rent will begin performances at the Duke of York’s theatre in London on 26 September. Over the summer, its creator will be celebrated in the UK premiere of the off-Broadway show The Jonathan Larson Project featuring lesser known songs from his archive at the Library of Congress. It runs at Southwark Playhouse Borough from 9 July to 22 August.
