RENT at Rockdale
After a sell-out season of The King & I, Rockdale Musial Society changes tone with the Pulitzer-Prize winning Broadway musical RENT.
Based on Puccini’s beloved opera La Bohème, RENT follows the ups and downs of a year in the life of a group of impoverished, artistic friends living in Manhattan’s East Village. The group’s dreams, losses, and love stories weave through the musical’s narration to paint a stunningly raw and emotional portrait of the gritty bohemian world of New York City in the late 1980's.
As this modern day circle of friends struggles with life, love, infidelity, and the usual hopes & fears of modern day life, they must also cope with drug addiction and the rising spectre of AIDS. In the midst of all this, one of them attempts to capture all of their lives on film, hoping to make artistic sense of it all.
RENT was first seen in a three-week workshop run at the New York Theatre Workshop in 1994 that quickly sold out. This same New York City off-Broadway theatre was also the musical’s initial home following its official January 25, 1996, opening. Tragically, the show’s creator Jonathan Larson died suddenly from an undiagnosed aortic aneurysm the night before the off-Broadway premiere.
RENT opened on Broadway in 1996. It went on to win every major best musical award, including the Tony Award, as well as the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
RENT is the seventh longest running show in Broadway history, running 12 years.
RENT has been translated into every major language and been performed on six continents.
THE CAST
Marcus Hurley plays the role of Mark Cohen, a struggling documentary filmmaker and best friend of Roger Davis, an HIV-positive musician who is recovering from heroin addiction, played by Charles McComb. Georgia Vella is Mimi Marquez; a sexy HIV-positive s dancer, who is also a heroin junkie, and Roger's love interest.
Talia Sigsworth plays a spunky performance artist Maureen Johnson, who is Mark's ex-girlfriend and current girlfriend of Joanne Jefferson, a tough, headstrong Harvard-educated lawyer played by Sherry-Anne Hayes.
Tom Collins, the HIV-positive philosophy teacher, friend and former roommate of Roger, Mark, and Maureen is played by Haji Myrteza. Arron Johnson is cast in the role of Angel Schunard, an HIV-positive Drag Queen with a heart of gold, and Tom Collins love interest.
Benjamin "Benny" Coffin III, played by Philby Mackintosh, is the former friend and landlord of Mark, Roger and Mimi's apartment.
ROCKDALE MUSICAL SOCIETY PRESENTS RENT
Book, Music and Lyrics by Jonathan Larson
May 31 to June 4, 2017
Rockdale Town Hall cnr Princes Highway and Bryant Street, Rockdale, NSW, Australia.
Images: (top) Arron Johnson and (lower) Georgia Vella and Charles McComb.
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