York Orchard Musical Theatre Company to rock the hard life in Rent

Running at the Grand Opera House for two nights only, Jonathan Larson's 1994 American musical will be a short, sharp shock of a show on August 26 and 27 with its story of a group of bohemians living in East Village New York under the shadow of AIDS.

Based loosely on Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème, Rent focuses on the trials and tribulations of the everyday life of Mark Cohen and Roger Davis, roommates played in Justine Hughes's production by Sam Lightfoot-Loftus and Joshua Eldridge-Smith.

Mark, a love-struck nerdy film-maker, documents the world around him with his camera as he narrates the story. Meanwhile Roger, an aspiring rock musician, struggles to embrace all of life’s moments as the pair and their friends, Mimi Marquez, Tom Collins, Angel Dumott Schunard, Maureen Johnson and Joanne Jefferson, deal with love, loss and AIDS.

"It's so relatable to today," says Sam, a 17-year old A-level student, taking theatre studies, music, English literature and politics at All Saints School in York. "It's a different style of musical: a rock musical that addresses contemporary issues of sex, AIDS, poverty."

Justine chips in: "But even though it addresses AIDS and poverty, every single song goes back to love, so it's not all doom and gloom. Rent has been my favourite musical since I saw the film when I was 13; I've watched it many times over the years and each time it has new meaning to it. So maybe when I was 13 it was all about the love stories, but through the years, everyone gets something different from it.

"But without being cheesy, why Rent keeps being performed goes back to the love thing: the best known lyric is in Seasons Of Love where they sing of measuring a year in your life in love."

Rent might be seen already as a period piece, a ground-breaking, taboo-breaking work of its time, but that authenticity is important to Justine's production.

"Generally, Americans are the first to do everything. This was the first show to say sex happens, AIDS happens, and in typical American style, they exaggerate everything and just go out and say it as it is," she says.

"We've done a lot of work to make it as authentic to the period as it can be, particularly with the costumes," adds the director-producer, whose costume team comprises Anne de Freyman and Sophie Roberts. "Fifty per cent of the costumes are originals and the rest have been made in the style of the period. Mainly knitted items. So it's going to be hot! Boiling!"

Beth Stevens as Mimi and Joshua Eldridge-Smith as Roger in Rent

Sam's character, Mark, stands out from those around him. "He's different to the other principals because he's the only one without a partner. His girlfriend has left him for a woman; the majority of his friends have AIDS, though he doesn't, and in the year ahead they will be taken from him," he says.

"He just wants everyone to be happy; he lets his roommate treat him quite unfairly; he gets on well with his ex-girlfriend and her new lover, and he's filming and recording what's going on to hold on to moments, to capture what's happening, for when they've gone."

Mark is at once distant, isolated yet still loving. "It's ironic that he's trying to be involved and communal but by filming his friends and being the narrator, he's also standing back, and so in his attempt to connect with them he's also distancing himself, coming to realise that he will have this film but no friends in a year," says Sam, who is continuing his prolific year of principal roles after playing Raoul in York Orchard's Phantom and Enjolras in Pick Me Up Theatre's Les Miserables.

Rent presents contrasting singing challenges to those Lloyd Webber and Boublil & Schonberg musicals. "By comparison, it's very stripped back, sung to a rock band, which exposes the actors with no strings behind them," says Justine.

"I really enjoy that because it's more challenging than Phantom and Les Miserables, which are more orchestral, and here you have to really understand the character you're playing, rather than having the safety net of the music explaining everything," says Sam. "A lot of the lyrics are spoken, instead of being sung, so it's more like a play where the music fits into it, which is different from a traditional musical.

"I have to sing in a higher range, in a whiny American accent, and it's a more raw voice too, whereas Raoul in Phantom is singing some lovely romantic songs, so doing Rent has enabled me to improve my singing."

Playing Roger Davis will be 20-year-old Joshua Eldridge-Smith, from Scarborough, who will begin three years of training at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow in September. "When I play a character I want to learn from it each time," he says. "I like the way that Roger is just very neutral in his personality and yet he has a lot going on in his head and you have to show that in a quiet way, where he's trapped off from himself and from the others, rather than being flamboyant.

"In playing Roger, I just try to react to how people are reacting to him in that moment, so if you change it each night, you react to it as fast as you can, as realistically as you can."

The York Orchard Musical Theatre Company present Rent at Grand Opera House, York, August 26 and 27, 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com