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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.
