Remembering Rent

January 18, 2008: As the famed Broadway production of Rent prepares to close on Broadway after more than 12 years of success, TROY DODDS looks back at the professional Australian production in 1998....

Rent will go down as one of the most successful musicals in Broadway history, and with good reason. At the time it opened in New York, it was a groundbreaking, soul-capturing show, and it is really no surprise that its success spread around the world.

It was in 1998 when Australia saw a local production of the tuner. The show opened at the Theatre Royal in Sydney on Wednesday, November 4, and received solid reviews. The Sun-Herald said "Rent rips and blazes the stage with sizzling high energy", while The Daily Telegraph labelled it a "knockout" and said it was a "musical for the millennium".

While it would be unlikely to see the company do it today, the Sydney Theatre Company played a major role in ensuring the 1998 production went ahead, along with Cameron Mackintosh, Kevin McCollum, Jeffrey Seller and Allan S. Gordon.

The cast featured Gavin D Andrew, Christine Anu, Miguel Ayesa, Natalie Bassingthwaighte, Fiona Choi, Rodger Corser, Annie Crummer, Genevieve Davis, Kathleen De Leon, Mark Richard Ford, Fred Jones, Matthew Lee, Cecilia Low, Peter Murphy, Clifton Oliver, Thern Reynolds, Opell Ross, Justin Smith, Prinnie Stevens, Michelle Smith and Jonathan Stuart.

While the show did open on November 4, it wasn't quite that simple. The show was reviewed by most critics on November 3 when the production held a "working media" night. This is general common practice these days but was quite rare in the late 1990's. The move grabbed some media attention - one newspaper quoting an un-named "diva" as saying: "It sounds a lot like an A-list and a B-list to me."

Rent moved on to Melbourne in March 1999.