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On Tuesday night, we had our group outing to Rent Remixed at the Duke of York’s on St. Martins Lane. And after the theatre dropped the “General Admission” policy for the majority of seats in the theatre, our Whatsonstagers ended up with better seats and beat the queue at the same time!

We had a huge response to this particular Outing with 180 of you booking in with us to see the show, and although there was unfortunately no Denise van Outen (we’re told she’s off sick at the moment), an enjoyable evening seemed to be had by all.

After enjoying the show, their free programmes (provided on top of the other freebies we were giving you anyway, in way of a small consolation for the number of understudies on the stage that evening - who I have to say were all absolutely fantastic!) and drinks in one of the Duke of York’s bars during the interval, theatregoers stayed on for our exclusive post-show Q&A with the cast in the auditorium. Associate Director Clive Paget, who is working with William Baker to remix the 90s musical, also joined in especially for our talk. The cast of Rent attending included - Leon Lopez, Oliver Thornton, Francesca Jackson and understudies CJ Johnson and Craig Stein– all of whom were incredibly generous with their time and were remarkably chatty, which is always great!

Amongst the topics discussed were the challenges of understudying two roles, and the notion of creating a new, modern and original production by remixing an earlier score and script. The cast also commented on how rewarding it was to have the freedom to develop their own characters, even though the characters are very established in the musical theatre world. This truly was a remixed version of what is now a classic musical! Interesting Fact: Kylie Minogue (who is friends with the director William Baker) features in the show as a voice on the answering machine!

Edited highlights of the discussion have been posted in the News section of the main Whatsonstage.com website at –
http://www.whatsonstage.com/index.php?pg=207&story=E8821194454649

You can add your own comments about the event either here or on the main Discussion Forum. You can also post your verdict on Rent to our User Reviews for the show –
http://www.whatsonstage.com/index.php?pg=206&action=users&show=L0730555667

We look forward to seeing you all again soon.

- Tom Atkins (Editorial Assistant) & Kate Jackson (Sales & Marketing)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Whatsonstage.com Outings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.