British director Luke Sheppard, who just last month won an Olivier Award for Paddington: The Musical, will be at the helm once again – the second time he has directed the musical.<\/p>\n
“This is Rent in the hands of a new generation of performers who love and adore this piece, and with Gaten Matarazzo playing Mark, it promises to be a thrilling experience,” he said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Rent was written and composed by Jonathan Larson, who tragically died the day before its premiere in 1996. The show was groundbreaking – it put the stories of LGBTQ+ people during the HIV\/Aids epidemic front and centre, tackled social taboos and gave a voice to those who are often marginalised.<\/p>\n
Hamilton creator Lin Manuel Miranda made an Oscar-nominated film in 2021 about Larson’s life, Tick Tick … Boom!<\/p>\n
The show’s producers, Chris Harper and Sonia Friedman, say the adaption stays loyal to Larson’s music.<\/p>\n
“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,” they said in the announcement.<\/p>\n
Matarazzo already had an impressive body of theatre work. As a child he performed in productions of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Les Mis\u00e9rables. In more recent years, he’s starred in Dear Evan Hansen and Sweeney Todd.<\/p>\n
The star has done some other television work, including voice acting and roles behind-the-scenes.<\/p>\n
However it was Stranger Things, which began in 2016 when Matarazzo was 13 years old, that catapulted him into the sci-fi fandom relm.<\/p>\n
The series, which had five seasons, was a cultural phenomenon and remains one of Netflix’s most-watched shows.<\/p>\n
Rent will open at London’s Duke of York Thatre on 26 September 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British director Luke Sheppard, who just last month won an Olivier Award for Paddington: The Musical, will be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-592524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}