REVIEW: RENT Returns To Sydney with a Large Scale Production for the Joan Sutherland Theatre at the Sydney Opera House.

Wednesday 1st October 2025, 7:30pm Joan Sutherland Theatre Sydney Opera House

Director Shaun Rennie delivers his third imagining of RENT, this time in his biggest staging of the musical to date in the Joan Sutherland Theatre of Sydney Opera House.  32 years after Jonathan Larson’s (Music, Book, Lyrics) musical theatre adaptation of Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème was first presented as a workshop production in the off-Broadway New York Theatre Workshop in 1993, almost 30 years after it’s Broadway debeut at the Nederlander Theatre in 1996,  and 27 years after it’s Australian premiere at the Theatre Royal in 1998, the “rock opera” retains a relevance.

Adapted from the opera standard La Bohème, which was in turn an adaptation of Henri Murger’s Scenes de le vie de bohème, there are multiple parallels formed with the source material, hence the likely reason why Opera Australia chose to add it to their line up but that is about where the connection to classical opera ends which may be a surprise for Opera Australia subscribers expecting an opera not a rock musical.  Larson adapts the characters to represent the community of New York’s East Village and bohemian Alphabet City when it was still home to artists and musicians and a high portion of immigrants and homeless. 

Poet Rodolfo becomes Roger (Harry Targett), former lead singer and rock guitarist who is dealing with recovering from drug addiction, managing his HIV positive status and coming to terms with his own mortality and the loss of his girlfriend who died by suicide after informing him of their HIV status.  Painter and Rodolfo’s flatmate Marcello becomes Mark (Henry Rollo), a documentary film maker capturing the life of his friends and community on a handheld camera. Their friend philosopher Colline becomes Tom Collins (Googoorewon Knox), a professor of computer aged philosophy who also has Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome and a tendency towards anarchy over conformity.  Marcello’s love interest, the singer Musetta is the lesbian Maureen (Calista Nelmes), a performance artist while her new lover changes from government minister Alcindoro to Joanne (Imani Williams) a public interest lawyer.  While Colline has a connection with musician Schaunard, Collins builds a romance with Angel Dumott Schunard (Jesse Dutlow), a drag queen street percussionist who also has AIDS.  Seamstress Mimi becomes Roger’s love interest, exotic dancer and HIV positive drug addict Mimi (Kristin Paulse) while landlord Benoit becomes estranged former friend Benny (Tana Laga’aia, the former flatmate that married up and sold his friends out in favour of following his inlaw’s path of property ownership and redevelopment.

For this production, Rennie has come up with a new vision for the work, with the added benefit of an Opera Australia budget, compared to his earlier stagings at Hayes Theatre in 2015 and the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House in 2021.  Dann Barber returns as set designer, still utilising scaffolding as the core structure of the set but these elements are given much more movement as components come together to form different spaces and expand to fill the larger venue which has a lot more vertical height than the Drama Theatre stage.  A backdrop of apartment windows reinforces the high density living while also providing new spaces in which to tell the story.  Paul Jackson’s lighting brings a rock concert element to the work with the ability for a wall of lights to be revealed while Ella Butler’s costume design captures the essence of the era and the socio economic situation. 

For this work, at times it feels like Rennie has altered the tempo of the work ever so slightly to ensure lyrics are understood and give the ability for the performers to adopt a more traditional, classically trained voice, potentially to assuage the Opera Australia subscribers but at other times the performers lean into the well known pace and accents which make lyrics harder to understand, particularly in the larger venue.  His adjustment of elements like Maureen’s solo show costume and the drug dealer’s cover add to the amusement and shock value while also making it easier to follow when performers double roles. 

The casting of newer entrants in the musical theatre industry is in keeping with the original work’s ethos that the characters are supposed to be somewhat obscure and unknown but represent a generation and a society that is a melting pot of all different origins, all living together doing their best to survive.  Henry Rollo, who made his musical theatre debut in Rennie’s the View Upstairs, leans into a more engaging and charismatic expression of Mark who presents his reaction to Maureen still needing his help and having to deal with his replacement Joanne with a wry humour and playfulness as he knows what Joanne is in for.  Harry Targett is suitably brooding and damaged as the reclusive Roger, not wanting to connect with people for fear of loosing them.  Calista Nelmes delivers a wonderfully unhinged Maureen, aided by Ella Butler’s dramatic costume design that takes Over The Moon to a new level.  Jesse Dutlow’s Angel is gorgeously camp and confident as the role is presented as more of a non-binary character than the originally described drag act and the images that Ella Butler and Dann Barber have created for them are breathtaking.  Their pure character is matched with Googoorewon Knox’s portrayal of Collins as another soulful pure character. 

In an age when immigrants and the queer community are being targeted in America and the wider society as more divisions are spouted, RENT retains a relevance as it teaches love, community, connection and compassion.  When it was staged in 2021, the world was dealing with the fallout of lockdowns and the pandemic which caused isolation, loss and anger.  In 2025, it is dealing with division, prejudice, misinformation, cost of living constraints and an increasingly selfish society.  Rennie ensures that this production of RENT continues Larson’s message of message of celebrating life and love in all its challenging forms.