The off-Broadway revival of Jonathan Larson’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning musical Rent will play its final performance at New World Stages on September 9. Directed by original helmer Michael Greif, the revival opened off-Broadway on August 11, 2011. Upon closing, it will have played 32 previews and 450 regular performances.
Rent is the story of friends and artists struggling to make a home in the East Village in the early 1990s. Loosely based on Puccini’s opera La Boheme, Rent follows a group of impoverished friends struggling to survive and create in New York’s gritty Alphabet City. Over the course of one year, these starving artists strive for success and acceptance while enduring the obstacles of poverty, illness, impending gentrification and the AIDS epidemic.
Rent currently features Justin Johnson as Roger, Arianda Fernandez as Mimi, Josh Grisetti as Mark, Emma Hutton as Maureen, Nicholas Christopher as Collins, Rashad Naylor as Benny, MJ Rodriguez as Angel and Shaleah Adkisson as Joanne, as well as Margot Bingham, Amber Iman, Marcus Paul James, Aaron LaVigne, Taylor Trensch, Morgan Weed, Xavier Cano, Sean Michael Murray and Genny Lis Padilla. Anthony Fedorov and Natalie Wachen are set to join the cast on July 11 as Roger and Mimi, respectively.
Watch clips of Rent below!