Rent: A glorious 30th anniversary staging of the cult Broadway hit

Ostensibly you couldn’t get two more different musicals than Paddington and Jonathan Larson’s cult 1996 Broadway hit, which reimagines Puccini’s La Boheme among a group of starving New York artists, junkies and drag queens, many of them HIV-positive. But both are richly resonant urban stories about loss and finding your community, and both have been triumphantly realised by director Luke Sheppard.

His hurtling, 30th anniversary staging of Rent is glorious, with an ensemble of astonishing voices anchored by Stranger Things star Gaten Matarazzo as our charming narrator, Mark. Yes, there is an element of indulgence in the portrayal of these yappy, fragile bohemians, and yes, the songs are mostly pitched at a full-throated, mascara-stained level of feeling that sits better on Broadway than it does in London.

But the kaleidoscopic score, which flits, fragments and recurs across genres including rock, blues, tango and gospel, rolls over you like an irresistible wave. Sheppard’s bare-bones, in-the-round production, the visibly exuberant playing of the band, and Tom Jackson Greaves’s hectic, muscular choreography are a heady mix.

What’s more, this revival arrives as we’re again taking stock of the political values and the HIV/Aids crisis of the 80s and 90s: see also Pride the musical and the forthcoming film Elsinore. Given Rent is partly about premature departures, the early death of Larson - who wrote the book, music and lyrics – only adds to the mythology. He suffered a fatal aneurysm three weeks before the show opened, ten days before his 36th birthday.

RENT. Full Company

Pamela Raith

The show covers a year, from one Christmas Eve to another, in the lives of characters who rotate around a squatted loft in the East Village. Here Mark, a wannabe documentarian, and aspiring songwriter Roger (Travis Ross) are burning old CBGCs posters to keep warm. The insistent, rising thrum of Roger’s guitar in the opening number Tune Up #1, sliding into hiccupy voicemails from Mark’s mom in Scarsdale and then the titular showstopper set out Larson’s stall magnificently.

The building is owned by their former roommate Benny (Joaquin Pedro Valdes), a scumbag yuppie who wants to turn it and an accompanying lot occupied by the homeless into a “digital interactive studio”. Roger is HIV-positive and Mark has recently been dumped for a woman by performance artist Maureen (played by the charismatic and wonderfully-named musician Lazy Violet).

Though everyone sings sardonically about being cold, hungry and sad, no-one actually seems that downcast apart from the tortured Roger. Hacker/philosopher Tom Collins (Billy Nevers) finds beatific love with street-drumming drag queen Angel (Jeevan Braich) at a support group for those living with Aids.

Agreeable Mark helps his supplanter Joanne sort out the tech for Maureen’s monologue protesting the eviction of the homeless. It’s sort of he point: this is a feckless, affectionate bunch, a loose family who put the “fun” in “dysfunctional” until they’re compelled to get serious.

Which partly happens thanks to the arrival of Mimi (lambent Cuban-American Alexa Lopez, making a scorching UK stage debut). Mimi’s a smackhead dancer/stripper with “the best ass below 14th St”. She waggles it at Roger one freezing night when she’s looking for light and love. Their purple duet, Light My Candle, should be absurd but it absolutely sizzles.

From here the gorgeous, interwoven numbers roll out: the heartbreaking Will I? about the indignity of illness; the dreamy groove of Santa Fe; Maureen’s po-facedly hilarious Over the Moon; the banging first act closer, La Vie Boheme (which rhymes “vindaloo” with “Maya Angelou”). The leads are pretty much flawless within the show’s perameters, Matarazzo bringing easygoing balance to the intensity of Ross and Lopez as Roger and Mimie.

Nevers sings beautifully and Braich confirms the firecracker star power he showed in Starlight Express, as melodious and acrobatically agile in heels as he was on wheels. Lazy Violet and Danielle Fiamanya are hilarious as Maureen and Joanne and Valdes has great fun as the evil Benny.

But Larson and Sheppard also ensure that supporting characters also get their chance to shine in the sun. The sheer verve and humanity of Rent shines through this revival. Paddington would surely approve.