I first saw Rent on Broadway back in 2003 and was very taken with the story of these young struggling people on the streets of Manhattan. I also absolutely fell in love with the song Seasons of Love and the tune has stayed with me ever since. So when I saw that Rent (but Remixed) was now showing at the West End here in London I was surprisingly hesitant about going to see it. Sandra, however, was quite keen so taking advantage of an interesting recent deal on cheaper tickets Pauline and I joined her.

In keeping with the theme of Rent, the theatre have employed an interesting tactic of discounting tickets but not allowing seats to be reserved so it was first come first serve. Of course there are number of premium seats that are available for “rent” for those particular about where they sit and who don’t mind paying the extra £20-30. From our experience tonight my advice is that if you go for the cheaper option you should make sure to get to the theatre quite early to line up otherwise you will be stuck sitting right at the front or right in the wings. It was quite funny watching everyone scrambling around to find a good seat.

Rent Remixed is based on Puccini’s opera La Boheme where young aspiring artists (be it singers, performance or film-makers) living in abject poverty in New York’s East Village have to battle their inner demons, each other and ultimately the killer AIDS to survive. There is an interesting bunch of characters which includes a boy in love with a showgirl who is HIV positive and a drug addict, another boy dumped by a girl for a girl, and big stud of a man who falls in love with a drag queen, who later seems to die of AIDS.

In this version an attempt has been made to it for the now. Therefore the charm of the original, with its grungy messy set, tattered outfits and rock flavour, has been replaced by a clean white modern almost sterile set and with characters dressed in nice clean clothing that does nothing to evoke the bohemian feel of the original The music too has been updated and now borders on pop. It truly is a reflection of the current climate.

Overall the musical was okay if not particularly evoking the emotion and passion of the original. The singing was quite outstanding even if the acting bordered on the average. It also confused me a bit to have a couple of English accents thrown into the mix of the American ones. Nevertheless the cast clearly enjoyed themselves up on stage and it showed generally in their performance. I must also comment that the boys were all very good looking which didn’t hurt at all. 🙂 Denise Van Outen, as the girl who falls for another girl, was the big ticket star and she certainly brought it however embarrassing her character proved to be. She strutted on after the beginning of the second half and boy was she hot and feisty! She definitely left nothing behind and really camped things up and played with the audience. I was fairly impressed with her even though I’ve seen a lot of comments slating her. In contrast Siobhan Donaghy, formerly of the Sugababes, was awful in her role as a showgirl. Denise, I’m afraid, upstaged everyone.