Rent: Skid row set to music

"Times are shitty, but it's pretty sure they could get worse."

Homelessness, poverty, protest, disease, disappointment, despondency - RENT could be a cameo of our times. First performed locally at the Abbey Theatre exactly five years ago, its continued relevance possibly provided motivation for director Scott Andrew and musical director Al Warren to get back together and reprise this gritty rock musical expose of society's underbelly.

Written in the wake of the economic and social fallout that followed the 1987 crash, RENT is the posthumous Pulitzer Prize winning magnum opus by Jonathan Larson. Larson died unexpectedly on the eve of its Broadway production in 1996. Now the ninth longest running show on the Great White Way, RENT was the first musical to feature HIV/AIDS, as well as openly gay and transgender characters.

Based on Puccini's 1896 opera La Boheme, RENT is set on New York's Lower East Side. It is a world of performers, prostitues, pimps and addicts - a community of the underprivileged living in a ghetto dystopia who's down-at-heel and drug-addled lives are leavened by hope, love and creativity.

Welcome back to the pre-digital world. While there are e-mails and mobile phones, there is none of the rampant social media we take so much for granted now. Budding filmmaker Mark Cohen, given suitable restraint by Chris Thompson, records his friends, roomies and associates on a video cam as they interact and become involved in a protest about a neighbourhood redevelopment project.

Benny (Jeremy Matthews) who used to share their cold crummy apartment, and who now owns the building, offers them a deal; if Mark and his mates forego the protest, he'll forego the rent they owe.

Andrew Hodgson's Roger is HIV positive and trying to write an epic song before he succumbs to the disease. Collins, played by Terrence Stapleton, is an HIV-positive gay activist and computer philosopher, who falls for Jason Harkett's transgender Angel.

Renee Pink, reprising her role as Maureen from five years ago, delivers another tremendous performance as the musical's prima donna in the demanding big-voiced beat poet rave Over the Moon. Mark's former girlfriend, Maureen is now in a volatile relationship with Joanne, a legal activist, played in terrific voice by Erica Ward. The on-again, off-again pair star in the duet Take Me or Leave Me.

Meanwhile, Mimi (Alexia Clark), a junkie who is involved with Benny, makes a play for Roger who is stil grieving for his dead girlfriend.

In this sing-through musical, the complex interplay between this core group is performed to a backing track on a two-levelled scaffold set. There's an additional 12-person ensemble who provide additional characters and cameos as well as the chorus and movement.

Compelling and fluent, with evocative music and gutsy performances, RENT offers insight into the rent or broken nature of a society that is only somewhat redeemed by the humanity of its characters.