Gaten Matarazzo Is Heading to the West End in Rent

Gaten Matarazzo is trading Hawkins, Indiana for New York’s East Village. The Stranger Things star, 23, will make his West End debut this fall as Mark Cohen — the narrator and documentary filmmaker at the heart of Jonathan Larson’s landmark rock musical Rent — in a new revival opening at London’s Duke of York’s Theatre on September 26, 2026.

The production marks the 30th anniversary of Rent‘s original premiere, and for the fans who grew up watching Matarazzo play the lovable, curly-haired Dustin Henderson across five seasons of Netflix’s Stranger Things, it’s the kind of casting that makes perfect sense once you hear it. Turns out, Matarazzo has been a theater kid his whole life — long before Dustin ever stepped foot in the Upside Down.

A Theater Kid Through and Through

Matarazzo made his Broadway debut as a child in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, followed by a stint in Les Misérables. More recently, he played Jared Kleinman in Dear Evan Hansen and Tobias in the acclaimed Sweeney Todd revival alongside Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford. The stage has always been home for him — Stranger Things just happened to make him famous everywhere else.

And Rent? That’s personal. Producer Chris Harper, who is teaming with Sonia Friedman for the first time on this production, revealed that the role came out of a broader conversation he and Matarazzo had been having about doing a London show together. “Actually through that conversation he said how much he loved Rent,” Harper shared. “He’s a real Rent-head — he knows the show back to front and it’s a musical he’s deeply, deeply passionate about. He literally knows the show in an encyclopedic way. He loves it, and he’s a very sweet young man, and he can’t wait. He’s desperate to start.”

Rehearsals are set to begin in early August.

The Production Behind the Revival

Directing is Luke Sheppard, who last month took home the Olivier Award for best direction of a musical for Paddington: The Musical — currently playing to packed houses at the Savoy Theatre — and is already being talked about as a likely Broadway transfer. Sheppard previously staged a version of Rent at Manchester’s intimate 120-seat Hope Mill Theatre in 2020, a run that was cut short by the pandemic but not before it made a serious impression on the people who saw it. Harper caught it just before theaters shut down. Friedman watched it later on video. Both were immediately committed to bringing it to London.

“Stripped back and bare — just let the story and the performances do the work,” is how Friedman described what Sheppard achieved at Hope Mill. “I felt I’d seen Rent for the first time.”

It took six years of navigating complicated rights and working to earn the trust of the Larson estate before this production could happen. “It’s taken us six years of chipping away to get this version of the show to London,” Harper said, noting that Jonathan Larson’s family “wanted to feel that the next version of Rent that was in the West End was one that we all really could be proud of.” In that time, Sheppard went from a respected regional director to an Olivier winner. The timing, ultimately, couldn’t be better.

The production is being produced by Chris Harper Productions, Sonia Friedman Productions, Winkler & Smalberg and Julie Larson, in association with the Hope Mill Theatre.

Why Rent Still Hits

Rent tells the story of a group of young artists struggling to survive in New York’s East Village in the late 1980s and early ’90s, living under the shadow of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Larson, who wrote and composed the entire show, died tragically of an aortic dissection the night before its first off-Broadway performance in January 1996. He was 35. The show transferred to Broadway a few months later, ran for 12 years, and became one of the longest-running productions in Broadway history. Its songs — “Seasons of Love,” “La Vie Bohème” — became part of the cultural fabric. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Oscar-nominated 2021 film tick, tick… BOOM! brought Larson’s story to a new generation.

Now, 30 years on, Friedman believes the show has a new kind of urgency. “This younger generation also finds a new resonance because the conditions that underpinned the original — even though, of course, we don’t have the catastrophe of HIV and AIDS — they’re being priced out of the city, they’re struggling to live, struggling to know how to survive,” she said. “You’ve got chaos politically, and it feels like a very urgent time for the young generation with their mental health, with social media. And this piece, even though it’s set then, I think it’s going to just feel so powerful and alive and urgent now.”

Sheppard echoed that energy in his own statement about the casting: “This is Rent in the hands of a new generation of performers who love and adore this piece, and with Gaten Matarazzo playing Mark, it promises to be a thrilling experience.”

Casting for the rest of the company — Roger Davis, Maureen Johnson, Joanne Jefferson, Tom Collins, Angel Dumott Schunard, Mimi Marquez, and Benny Coffin III — has not yet been announced.

On the accessibility front, the producers are making a point of keeping the show reachable for the exact audience it’s meant for: 10,000 tickets will be priced at the UK equivalent of $46 or under. “We’ve got to be mindful of accessibility,” Friedman said, “and at the same time mindful of the fact that we need to break even.”

The run is currently planned as a limited engagement — but if it catches fire the way everyone involved seems to believe it will, a New York transfer feels like more than just a possibility. Tickets go on sale Tuesday at noon UK time.