Stranger Things star Gaten Matarazzo to make West End debut in Rent revival

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. Rent at the Shaftesbury theatre, London, in 1998. …