THE multi-award winning musical Rent arrives in Worcestershire today for a week long run at Malvern’s Festival Theatre.

This is the 20th anniversary production of Jonathan Larson’s ground-breaking Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning show.

Jonathan Larson’s musical, inspired by Puccini’s opera La Bohème, won four Tonys, six Drama Desk Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1996.

It ran on Broadway for 12 years, from 1996 to 2008, premiered in London’s West End in 1998 at the Shaftesbury Theatre, where it ran for 18 months. and was adapted into a film in 2005. Larson’s world is inhabited by a group of bohemian artists who struggle to maintain their friendships and their non-conformist ideals in New York's East Village.

Facing their problems head on, they make personal self-discoveries and find what really matters most in life. The poignancy of the story was heightened when Larson died of an aortic dissection in January 1996, the night before the show’s first off-Broadway performance at New York Theatre Workshop.

The much-loved score features songs such as Seasons of Love, Take Me or Leave Me, One Song Glory, La Vie Bohème, Without You, I’ll Cover You, Out Tonight, I Should Tell You and the title song.

Among the cast is Ross Hunter, whose West End credits include We Will Rock You, Legally Blonde and others, Billy Cullum, who has appeared in Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Ryan O’Gorman, who has been in Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera and Billy Elliot).

Director Bruce Guthrie said,:“Our aim is to serve the fans of the show who have loved it so passionately since its ground-breaking premiere off Broadway in 1996, while introducing it to a new generation of musical theatre fans.”

The show runs through to Saturday, November 26, 2016.