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Struggling New York artistes immortalised in Rent

Unless you had any inkling about the origins of this highly successful play, you might have felt confusion as the curtain opened on a New York loft inhabited by an extraordinary variety of characters, each one enthusiastic and articulate and gifted with a beautiful singing voice. A loud rock band seated on stage beneath some scaffolding sometimes overpowered the songsters, but as the sound technicians levelled things out, the accompaniment took effect, and the story took shape.
With music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson, the story is loosely based on Puccini’s opera La Boheme. Larson exchanges Rodolfo’s garret in Paris’ Latin Quarter for a loft in Alphabet City in New York’s Lower East Side, and translates the love stories, tragedies and successes of a bygone age into the modern idiom so familiar to us all.
Director, Zane Lucas, first saw the play performed in London in 1998, when he was studying drama at the Italia Conti Academy of the Arts, and decided that when the time was right he would bring the production to Zimbabwean audiences. At the beginning of 2011 he handpicked a cast of exceptional talent, and after three and a half months of rigorous training the play opened at Reps Theatre to rapturous audiences.
It would be difficult to single out any of the 17-strong cast for special mention. Josh Ansley, a confident and gifted singer and actor well known to local audiences, plays Mark Cohen, narrator of the story and struggling Jewish documentary filmmaker. He is gutted when his performance artist girlfriend Maureen leaves him for the Harvard-educated lawyer, Joanne. The girls conduct a red- hot affair, but Mark persists with his career.
Zoran Zec is convincing as the once successful but now struggling musician Roger Davies, who shares the loft with Mark. HIV positive and an ex-junkie he’s determined to write one last great song before he dies. His love interest Mimi Marquez, go-go girl and coke addict, is played by the beautiful Tina Masawi.
David Bvumbe, with his clear intonation and perfect pitch, slips easily into the role of Benny, landlord of the loft dwellers. Before marrying money Benny was Mark’s roommate and Mimi’s boyfriend.
There is a moving love affair between Tom, a gay anarchist, and Angel, a young drag queen, played by Kirby Chipembere and Patrick Barrett respectively. Tom nurses Angel in his last days and on the day of his funeral, the friends manage to sort out their differences and Mark starts work on his film.