Oliver Thornton and Francesa Jackson in Rent

Here’s a sampling of what they had to say:

Sam Marlowe of The London Times: “Rent hit the West End in 1998—and flopped, with British audiences and critics failing to respond to its blend of bombast and sentiment. Now it has been reimagined by William Baker, the creative brains behind Kylie Minogue’s transformation from soap star to gay icon and pop princess, and director of her stage shows. If anyone can give Larson’s musical a hip replacement, it ought to be Baker, along with fellow Kylie collaborator, the musical supervisor Steve Anderson, and a sexy cast including Denise Van Outen and the former Sugababe Siobhan Donaghy. But the fact is, Rent still can’t quite pay its way… Anderson has done a cracking job of funking up Larson’s score, replacing overweening guitar rock with pumping gay club anthems and diva pop, flavoured with rippling keyboards and electronica. Ashley Wallen’s choreography could be more imaginative, but Baker draws winning performances from his glamorous cast—not least Van Outen as the voracious bisexual performance artist Maureen… Overall, this is a flawed product stylishly repackaged. Whether it spawns a new generation of ‘Renthead’ fans remains to be seen. But I suspect Larson wouldn’t have been displeased with the makeover.”

Michael Billington of The Guardian: “They call this ‘Rent Remixed’. I'd dub it ‘Rent Reduced’, in that the late Jonathan Larson's reworking of La Bohème, while never a great musical, has been turned into a grisly, synthetic, pseudo pop concert with no particular roots or identity… Originally seen off Broadway in 1996, Rent was the Hair of its day: a tribal musical that offered a hymn to the suffering young on New York's Lower East Side, with characters who vaguely echoed Puccini's originals... It wasn't great, but the original had a rough workshop spontaneity and provided a touching anthem to doomed American youth. The plot and numbers have been retained in this new version but everything else has been senselessly jettisoned. The characters in Baker's updated version now inhabit a white-walled, perspex-screened, skeletal-doored world that shrieks Manhattan chic: if this is raffish Bohemian poverty, I wouldn't mind some of it. The songs, re-orchestrated for a four-piece orchestra, also never seem to stem from a precise social context, but become a series of discrete numbers. It is all as misguided as a recent attempt to yank Hair out of its 1960s world and treat it as a modern protest musical… The show is not so much a carbon-copy of the original as a reductive re-hash of a show that caught something of the flavour of ‘90s New York.”

Denise Van Outen in Rent

Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph: “This deeply unwelcome revival of the lachrymose American musical is modishly billed as ‘Rent Remixed.’ ‘Rent Drastically Reduced’ would be nearer the mark. Masterminded by director William Baker and music supervisor Steve Anderson, best known (though not in my circles) as the creative team behind Kylie Minogue, the show cuts Jonathan Larson’s musical to the bone. There are just four musicians in the pit, and a supporting ensemble of only seven. Gone too is the grunge-filled atmosphere of the original, a celebration of bohemian New Yorkers coping with poverty, Aids and the eternal self-absorption of youth loosely based on Puccini’s La Boheme. Instead everything is modishly minimal… This clinical, cynical, underpowered revival makes its shortcomings all too apparent. The characterisation is feeble, there is no momentum in the plot in which characters, many of them suffering from AIDS, drug addiction and in Mimi’s case both, meet, fall in love and die, and the lyrics are relentlessly trite… Denise Van Outen gives one of the most embarrassing turns I’ve ever seen as Maureen, bedecked in basque and fishnet tights and constantly thrusting her boobs, bum and crotch at the audience. I’m afraid my only response was a wan ‘act your age, dear’ and a desperate desire to leave this ghastly production pronto. Unfortunately it goes on, and on and on, offering cruel and unusual punishment to anyone burdened with a brain.”

Nicholas de Jongh of The Evening Standard: “Rent, Jonathan Larson's ground-breaking, AIDS-related musical, with its straight, gay, lesbian and drug-addict lovers has run on Broadway since 1997. It is now given a strangely disappointing makeover or remix by director William Baker. The best of Larson's songs, those extraordinary, poignant laments in which young nineties Americans faced up to the terrible decline and fall of Aids, worked their magic last night, thanks to Steve Anderson's musical rearrangements for a powerful just four-strong orchestra. They keep much of their power, passion and musical glory. I can think of no musical whose lyrics so startle with their youthful despair—‘How do you measure your last year on earth’—or songs as desolate as Without You to which Siobhan Donaghy's thin, seductive waif of a Mimi gives lovely voice. Baker's tinkering, though, achieves more of a weird mix-up than an illuminating stir… Enjoy Rent Remixed for its exquisite songs, not its vacuous story.”

Quentin Letts of The Daily Mail: “Over-amplified, out of key, weirdly trans-Atlantic, politically dishonest: these are just some of the problems with this image-fixated production. The cast think they’re good looking and talented. Right on the first score, regrettably wrong on the second. The premise of the thing is a rent protest by impoverished young New Yorkers, though quite why anyone should expect to live free on the island of Manhattan—where it is perfectly possible to find work—I cannot understand. I was on the side of the landlord from the start in this one. Not that the youngsters looked or sounded remotely poor, anyway. There isn’t a whiff of real poverty. The set is minimalist, all white-washed rear wall and steel chairs. Some of the singing last night was even more metallic. Miss Van Outen flashes more flesh than is advisable for one of her youth and vintage. She gropes her crotch, prances about in black leather boots and bustier, wrinkles her ageing forehead and overacts badly. I’m afraid she makes a fool of herself… There was a tiresome crowd of opening-night whoopers there yesterday evening but I don’t see this show last long enough to run up much of a rent bill.”