Joaquin Pedro Valdes Cast in ‘Rent’ West End Revival
Homegrown Filipino theater artist and UK-based actor Joaquin Pedro Valdes has been cast as Benny in the upcoming West End revival of Rent.
Valdes joins a company led by Stranger Things star Gaten Matarazzo as Mark. Also in the principal cast are Travis Ross as Roger, Bella Brown as Mimi, Billy Nevers as Collins, Lazy Violet as Maureen, Danielle Fiamanya as Joanne, and Jeevan Braich as Angel. Additional casting will be announced at a later date.
Valdes’ recent London stage credits include The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical, Death Note: The Musical in Concert, Heathers: The Musical, and Pacific Overtures.
The new production will be directed by Luke Sheppard, with choreography by Tom Jackson Greaves. The creative team also includes David Woodhead (set design), Gabriella Slade (costume design), Howard Hudson (lighting design), Paul Gatehouse (sound design), George Reeve and Nathan Amzi (video design and cinematography), Jackie Saundercock (hair and make-up design), Bill Sherman (musical supervisor), Katy Richardson (musical director and associate musical supervisor), Asha Jennings-Grant (intimacy director), Priya Patel Appleby (associate director), and Joe Trill (dialect coach).
Following the casting announcement, Valdes shared on Instagram why Rent continues to resonate with audiences.
“The themes of choosing love over fear, choosing community, choosing creation over war, it still resonates right now. But because Luke is Luke, he’s a genius, he’s bringing it to a new generation so that younger people who have no idea what Rent is will watch it and say, ‘That feels so new, and that’s so exciting.'”
Premiering Off-Broadway in 1996 before transferring to Broadway later that year, Rent features music, lyrics, and a book by the late Jonathan Larson. Inspired by Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohème, the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning musical follows a group of young artists and friends navigating love, loss, identity, and the AIDS crisis in New York City’s East Village.
Valdes added:
“Retaining all of that purity, and all that passion, and that resistance, and that celebration, and hopefully it gives them the same kind of magic and tickle that I felt when I first encountered Rent.”
Rent begins previews on Sept. 26 at the Duke of York’s Theatre, soon to be renamed the Tom Stoppard Theatre, with an official opening night on Oct. 8. The limited engagement is scheduled to run through March 27, 2027.
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