Jonathan Larson's RENT is getting a decidedly different look at Bucks County Playhouse this month, as the 30th-anniversary production trades the original 1996 Broadway staging for a movement-heavy new vision from director and choreographer Jennifer Weber. The show opened August 13 in New Hope and runs through September 13, following the young artists of New York City's East Village as they navigate friendship, romance and creativity while trying to pay the rent.
Rather than recreating Michael Greif's original Broadway blocking, Weber built a production designed to illustrate how the characters connect and clash through heightened physical movement, according to PhillyVoice. As reported by 94.5 PST, Weber said she wants audiences to reconnect with RENT in a way that feels present, adding that cast members discovering the show with fresh eyes create an exciting conversation between original fans and a new generation.
A Tony Nominee's Fresh Take on a Modern Classic
Weber's own résumé lends weight to that ambition. She earned two 2023 Tony Award nominations for Best Choreography for her work on & Juliet and KPOP, which opened on Broadway within days of each other, and she has also collected an Emmy Award and an Olivier Award nomination. Per the same 94.5 PST report, she directed and choreographed the entire Bucks County Playhouse production, building it specifically to feel new for the show's 30th anniversary rather than replaying past interpretations.
The stakes of reinventing RENT are not small. Larson died unexpectedly of an aortic dissection at age 35 on January 25, 1996, the night before the show's first off-Broadway preview at the New York Theatre Workshop, according to the Pulitzer Prizes. He posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Musical, among four total Tony Awards, and the original Broadway production went on to run for 12 years and 5,123 performances at the Nederlander Theatre before closing in 2008, grossing more than $280 million, per Wikipedia.
A Local Connection Behind the Footlights
Leading the Bucks County cast is Austin Turner as Roger Davis, a Princeton, New Jersey native who trained at Westminster Choir College. Turner has personal history with New Hope beyond the stage door: he worked backstage at Bucks County Playhouse during his college years and later did student teaching in nearby New Hope-Solebury, according to 94.5 PST. He has also played Roger before, earning an Outstanding Actor nomination from the Connecticut Critics Circle for the role at North Shore Music Theatre.
The rest of the ensemble mixes Broadway veterans with regional talent. Sam Primack, who plays Mark Cohen, previously appeared in Broadway's Dear Evan Hansen, while Alysia Velez, who plays Mimi Marquez, appeared in Into the Woods on Broadway. David Merino, who plays Angel Schunard, has Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club on his résumé, and Veronica Otim, cast as Joanne Jefferson, along with Tiernan Tunnicliffe, who plays Maureen Johnson, both came from Broadway's & Juliet — the same show that earned Weber one of her Tony nominations. Kevin Trinio Perdido, who plays Benjamin Coffin III, previously appeared in Once Upon a One More Time, and Owen Scales rounds out the principal cast as Tom Collins.
Historic Stage, Accessible Performances
The production is staged inside a venue with its own outsized theatrical pedigree. Bucks County Playhouse opened in 1939 inside a converted 1790 gristmill on the Delaware River and carries the official designation of the State Theatre of Pennsylvania, having historically operated as a pre-Broadway tryout house where stars including Grace Kelly, Angela Lansbury and Robert Redford performed early in their careers, according to STAGE Magazine.
The theater has also built in accessibility for this run, scheduling a dedicated ASL-interpreted performance for September 6 in partnership with Hands UP Productions, which provides trained sign-language interpreters for deaf and hard-of-hearing audience members. Because the show explores mature material — explicit language and themes of drug abuse, suicide and terminal illness rooted in Larson's original portrayal of the 1990s East Village HIV/AIDS crisis — the Playhouse's performance advisory recommends the show for mature audiences and prohibits children under age 4 in the auditorium, per PhillyVoice.
Part of a Nationwide 30th-Anniversary Wave
The New Hope production lands amid a broader surge of RENT anniversary events happening across the country this year. That wave has included an off-Broadway neuroinclusive revival staged by EPIC Players in June and a cast reunion concert featuring 13 original RENT performers at the Broadway Festival at Kingston’s Hutton Brickyards, which drew nearly 2,900 fans earlier this month.
Bucks County Playhouse's version keeps RENT's signature songs intact — Seasons of Love, La Vie Bohème, Take Me or Leave Me, and Light My Candle among them — even as it swaps the original staging for Weber's newer physical vocabulary. Tickets remain on sale through the Bucks County Playhouse website, and the box office can be reached at 215-862-2121. The production continues its run in New Hope through September 13.
