Rent

It was a pleasure to return to the Princess Royal Theatre for this performance of Rent, and I would like to thank the Melyn officials for accommodating my late change of visit, and their help with seating arrangements.

I had first seen this show in London when it transferred from Broadway and was very interested in what the company would do with this musical in the Princess Royal.

The musical written by Jonathan Larsen was a totally different genre of show than the company performed in 2023. Dealing with HIV, homophobia and death, along with homelessness. It is a very complex piece and requires a great deal of teamwork and trust by the actors to perform.

On entering the auditorium, I was impressed with the set design and the simplicity, but effectiveness of it. I also liked the canvas city set in front of the stage.

The programme allocated the cast as named cast and supporting cast, however I think this was a disservice to all on stage as every person performing developed their own character and are to be congratulated on this.

The lighting was effective, and apart from a few occasions when the radio mikes were late coming on the sound was as well. The small band under the direction of Matt Hampson worked really well together.

The role of Mark, who also acted as the narrator of the piece was taken by Sam Freeman and he did this very well. He has a lovely singing voice and good characterisation.

Ben Bateman played his roommate Roger, Ben’s musicality came to the fore during this show playing the guitar and vocally. again a very strong performance by this talented actor.

The role of Mimi, the drug fuelled exotic dancer who Roger falls in love with was played by Ben’s wife Emily, playing her first lead role. I was very impressed by this performance, and the closeness between the characters was evident, I am sure helped by their actual relationship making some of their scenes extremely poignant especially towards the end of the show when Roger thought that Mimi was dying.

Mark’s ex Maureen was taken by Stephanie Thomas , I again really liked this performance. This actress did not appear until the end of the first half but gave a strong representation of the activist fighting the developers.

These main characters were well supported by Sophie Bevan who played Joanne, Joseph Robinson as Benny and William Whitehead as Collins. Each of these were well cast in their roles and gave a strong performance.

On the evening that I saw the show the performance I enjoyed most was by Andy Walters-Burnett playing the role of Angel. I have seen this actor in quite a few productions but without doubt this is the best performance I have seen by him.

There were some lovely moments in the show which I liked, Le Vie Boheme, Seasons of Love, Angels death scene, all of these nicely choreographed by Anthony Argyle.

Rent is a very powerful piece of theatre and thanks to the performance of every single person on stage it worked really well, congratulations to Melyn on this production.

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