Rent musical takes director back to bohemian NY
Theatre director and actor Lara Macgregor is well-placed to direct the Court Theatre’s new production of the hit musical Rent.
The show’s New York setting in the early 1990s bohemian arts scene is very familiar to Macgregor.
‘‘I was living in New York in the 1990s being an actor and being a bohemian and saw the original production,’’ she said.
‘‘I would never have thought that, 30 years later, I would end up directing it.
‘‘What I remember from the original production was the intensity and the urgency.
‘‘I wanted to make sure that I captured that.’’
Rent, which opened at Christchurch’s Court Theatre on Saturday and runs until January 21, is a rock musical based on the opera La Bohe` me about a group of young artists living in Manhattan during the HIV/ AIDS pandemic.
The show, which opened on Broadway in 1996, ran for 12 years, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Musical across its record-breaking run.
Macgregor said she wanted to capture the spirit of 1990s New York in the new production.
‘‘The run-down buildings that you worked in. The freezing cold. The life of the street. The only thing missing from Rent that I couldn’t put in were the smells of New York. The food vendors and the garbage in the summer when there was a garbage truck strike.’’
The young cast have been given a crash course in the social scene of 1990s New York and the horrors of AIDS.
‘‘That feeds into the world that we’ve created.
‘‘That was the quickest way we could get them into the mindset of the Lower East Side of Manhattan.’’
She recently filmed a role in a movie featuring Top Gun: Maverick actor Jennifer Connelly and James Bond star Ben Whishaw. The film, Bad Behaviour, is directed by Alice Englert, who is Jane Campion’s daughter.
‘‘It was a masterclass to be sat in a room with those actors. It was gift of gold after a tough few years during the pandemic.’’