‘Stranger Things was a train you can’t jump off’: Gaten Matarazzo on his return to the stage

The actor we know as Dustin was a ‘theatre kid’ from age 11. Now he’s starring in a new staging of Rent. He discusses why the musical is as relevant as ever – and what it’s like being a child star in the internet age

Rent is a study in both joy and despair. The 90s rock opera spawned the kinds of irrepressible musical numbers – Seasons of Love, Take Me Or Leave Me – that would become Broadway standards, mastered and massacred in choir auditions and high schools across the world. Jonathan Larson’s self-described attempt “to bring musical theatre to the MTV generation” is also a capitalist critique: a drama about a bohemian coterie of penniless creatives sticking it to the man, all while their circle is ravaged by HIV and Aids. It still feels highly relevant today; see: What You Own – sample lyric “And when you’re living in America / At the end of the millennium / You’re what you own”.

Gaten Matarazzo says “that song may arguably be more impactful now than in 1996, considering what we know about what American media and world media would become, and our access to constant mind-numbing noise …” This autumn, he makes his West End debut as Mark, the struggling film-maker who chronicles the lives of his friends in New York’s East Village, and serves as the show’s de facto narrator.

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