EXCLUSIVE: Gaten Matarazzo, who excelled as fast-talking Dustin Henderson on smash-hit Netflix sci-fi horror drama Stranger Things, will make his London stage debut in an exciting revival of Jonathan Larson’s landmark musical Rent, which will premiere at the West End in the fall, Deadline can reveal.

Matarazzo — who is a self-described “Rent-head,” according to Chris Harper, who’s producing with Sonia Friedman — will begin rehearsing in early August with director Luke Sheppard, who recently won an Olivier for his direction of Paddington: The Musical.

Rent will begin performances at the Duke of York’s Theatre Sept. 26 with an official opening night Oct. 8. Tickets are set to go on sale at noon U.K. time Tuesday.   

The production that Harper and Friedman (who are teaming up for the first time) are respecting at the Duke of York’s is a version of the one that Sheppard helmed at the 120-seat Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester six years ago. Its run was interrupted by the pandemic, though Harper managed to catch it before theaters shut down. The show was filmed, and people paid to watch a video of it; I was one of them. (I’m lucky enough to have seen the original Rent at New York Theatre Workshop and watched it night after night when it was in previews at the Nederlander Theatre on Broadway.)

Harper and Friedman are just as passionate about it. 

Harper — who produced the revival of Angels in America, Company and several other shows with Marianne Elliott — also saw the original Broadway production when it was in previews. He saw Sheppard’s production at Hope Mill just before COVID rules closed theaters. 

Harper believes that the Hope Mill production is the version “that London should have.”

However, everything slowed down because of COVID, “and it’s taken us six years of chipping away to get this version of the show to London,” noting that there’s a complicated set of rights, plus Larson’s estate wanted to be sure that this was the right team. “And in that six years since I saw it and Sonia saw it, Luke Sheppard has become a superstar director.”

The & Juliet show hadn’t happened, and Sheppard hadn’t won an Olivier award for best direction of a musical for Paddington, which is playing to packed houses at the Savoy Theatre and will likely transfer to Broadway next year.

Harper noted that the estate “wanted to feel that the next version of Rent that was in the West End was one that we all really could be proud of.”

In a way, it’s a more apt time to bring Rent to London because of the state the world’s in and, as in the show, young artists are struggling as the U.K.’s Art Council and local borough councils are slashing budgets, making it more difficult than ever for young people to break through into the theatrical arts and music.

Friedman feels that “this younger generation also finds a new resonance because the conditions that underpinned the original — even though, of course, we don’t have the catastrophe of HIV and AIDS — they’re being priced out of the city, they’re struggling to live, struggling to know how to survive. You’ve got chaos politically, and it feels like a very urgent time for the young generation with their mental health, with social media. And this piece, even though it’s set then [in the 1990s], I think it’s going to just feel so powerful and alive and urgent now.”

Also, Harper argues that what Sheppard did so “brilliantly” was to cast it in a very youthful way, “and it really was kids talking to that young generation, and we want to try and retain that youthful energy as much as possible.” 

Friedman observed that when she saw it at Hope Mill she admired how Sheppard and his creative team put on a show that was “stripped back and bare [to] just let the story and the performances do the work, and I felt I’d seen Rent for the first time.”

She made a point, which I agree with, and that’s that ”one or two” previous productions of Rent have tried “to put a top spin on it and it doesn’t need it. It’s a work of art. It’s a work of its time, and it’s also, like all great classics, timeless.” It’s always been a dream of hers to do Rent. “And so when Chris and I both were going for it, we said, ‘Let’s do it together,'” she explains.

The coup thus far is getting Matarazzo to play Mark. It’s such an inspired idea to cast him because he’s a creature of the stage, having made his Broadway debut in Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, followed by a stint in Les Miserables, then a role in Dear Evan Hansen and, more recently, in the successful run of Sweeney Todd with Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford.

“Well, we’re over the moon,“ Harper says of Matarazzo’s casting.

Friedman, who produced Stranger Things: The First Shadow with Netflix, says that she’s well aware what that demographic is “and how excited they are going to be about seeing Gaten on stage. And to introduce them to something like Rent over here in the UK is just mind-blowingly exciting. He’s going to bring in a whole new audience, as our play did, and this feels really special.”

Harper reveals that he and Matarazzo had been talking about doing a play in London and “actually through that conversation he said how much he loved Rent. And I mean, he’s a real Rent-head; he knows the show back to front and it’s a musical he’s deeply, deeply passionate about. And then he and Luke met each other and completely fell in love and he’s so excited to do it. He literally knows the show in an encyclopedic way. He loves it, and he’s a very sweet young man, and he can’t wait. He’s desperate to start.”

This production of Rent will be produced by Chris Harper Productions, Sonia Friedman Productions, Winkler & Smalberg and Julie Larson, in association with the Hope Mill Theatre. (The original was produced on Broadway by Jeffrey Seller, Kevin McCollum, Allan S. Gordon and the New York Theatre Workshop.)

Friedman says that “we’ll hold them [the original producing team] close to us because as the original producers, it’s their legacy. I think we’re very aware and very conscious of the responsibility that we hold to, obviously, the Larson family and everybody who was there at the beginning. And I think because we were also around then, I think we’re aware of the importance of getting this right and we’re very, very, grateful to the Larson family and the estate for giving us this opportunity. And obviously, Kevin and Jeffrey were there at the very beginning and they’ll be with us, I hope, cheering us along.”

I well remember seeing Rent at NYTW and meeting the original company to do a newspaper feature.  I have a memory of the company performing “Seasons of Love” from the show under the Brooklyn Bridge — one of the most extraordinary times. I saw three previews of Rent back to back at the Nederlander. The Hope Mill production I saw on video comes close to capturing some of that same raw energy I felt seeing the original in the nineties.

Both Friedman and Harper remind me that the version I saw on my laptop from Hope Mill was socially distanced. “They weren’t allowed to touch. They weren’t allowed to kiss. They weren’t even allowed to sing in each other’s directions,” Harper points out.

Even so, it was moving and had fire in its belly.

The idea for the Duke of York’s is to make it “as intimate as possible, in the realms of commercial theater, as it were,” Friedman says.

And what about ticket prices? Harper says there will be 10,000 tickets priced at the U.K. equivalent of $46 dollars or under. 

For this particular audience, Friedman adds, “We’ve got to be mindful of accessibility and, at the same time, mindful of the fact that we need to break even. So we will be constantly making sure that people can get in for the price that means that they can see it, they can afford it and that we can afford to run it.”

The show will start as a limited run “and we’ll see” what happens, Friedman says.

Both Harper and Friedman refuse to discuss the show’s life after the West End. My guess is that if this production takes off as they hope, then the sky’s the limit for it. It’ll certainly be headed, at some point, over to New York City.

The creative team for the Duke of York’s is essentially the same as it was up at Hope Mill Theatre. Choreography by Tom Jackson Greaves; set design by David Woodhead; costume design by Gabriella Slade; lighting design by Howard Hudson; audio production and sound design by Paul Gatehouse; video design and cinematography by George Reeve and Nathan Amzi; makeup and hair design by Jackie Saundercock; U.K. casting by Pearson Casting and U.S. casting by Jim Carnahan. The musical supervisor is Bill Sherman, and the musical director and associate musical supervisor is Katy Richardson. The intimacy director is Asha Jennings-Grant, the associate director is Priya Patel Appleby and the dialect coach is Joel Trill.