Bohemian rhapsody

The Rent cast (from left) Paul Fagamalo, Michael Murphy, Rebecca Wright, Kristian Lavercombe, Tama Waipara, Cameron Clayton, Melissa Nordhaus and Annie Crummer. Photo / Sandra Roberts

Michael Murphy is much hairier than he was six years ago.

He greets Annie "mumma Crummer" with the cheeky smile that melted the New Zealand Idol judges back in 2004, when he was runner-up to Ben Lummis, and lets her give him a big squeeze.

They turn motormouthed when asked about the four-storey high scaffolding-acrobatics, saucy outfits and on-stage sex scenes in their rock musical Rent.

"It's an incredibly sexy show," says Murphy. "Guys, girls, gays, anyone, you are going to enjoy this I promise."

Director Richard Neame says Murphy was the production's pleasant surprise - he just turned up to auditions and happened to blow the casting director away.

Crummer, on the other hand, was part of the proposal put to Neame by Grant Meese of Amici Productions. Having performed in the Australian version of the musical 11 years ago, and more recently wowed New Zealand audiences as the Killer Queen in We Will Rock You, she was just the big name they needed to attach to Auckland Musical Theatre's version of the production. She and Murphy are joined by Kristian Lavercombe, Rebecca Wright, Melissa Nordhaus, Tama Waipara, Cameron Clayton and Paul Fagamalo.

Neame, who juggles directing with his day job as a bank manager, has been involved in New Zealand's musical theatre for more than 20 years. He performed all around Asia and Australia with big shows like Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and West Side Story, and moved into directing in 2006 for the Auckland Musical Theatre Company's The Secret Garden. He directed Beautiful Thing in 2008 and Stephen Sondheim's Assassins last year.

"I just got the bug. When you are a performer you are looking after your own show, you are keeping fit and learning lines and all that sort of stuff. But being a director, well, you have to be on top of everybody else's show and then you've got costumes and lighting and choreography and musical direction that you need a hand or an opinion in. You have to sway those people into your vision, and you have to be quite firm on what your vision is."

Neame likes his shows to be realistic: "Stylised pastiche-type numbers. Ensemble-piece shows, where every character is strong. [Musical] items are stand-out numbers and are suspended reality, people don't walk around singing and dancing."

Rent, with nearly two dozen songs, eight strong characters and 17-member cast is just his kind of thing.

The grungy musical, based on Puccini's opera La Boheme, spoke to New York's youth and shocked everyone else when it hit Broadway in 1996. Set in New York's East Village in the late 1990s, its characters are a collection of gay, lesbian and HIV positive bohemians who, among other hurdles, are struggling to pay their rent.

"It's such an emotional ride, you have highs and lows, the ballads are all big production numbers and soaring with emotion. If someone likes rock music, pop music, dance music, if they like soaring ballads, they will love Rent ... If they like [TV show] Glee, they will love Rent," Neame says.

A lot has changed in a decade - civil unions are legal, HIV can be managed with drugs - but Neame says the show is still totally relevant.

"It's such a commentary for these times even though it first debuted in 1996. It has messages on living for the day, appreciating diversity. It's a social commentary piece on acceptance."

Murphy, now 23, agrees that it still speaks to people his age, though they probably won't find it as scandalous as they did in the 90s:

"Everything in it is so poignant. People get sick, people break up, people die and all these things could happen to anyone.

"I think it's hard to shock people these days. There will be moments where people go wow, they just did that on stage, but it's not anything you don't see on a regular Friday night on TV or in a bar."

Murphy had only just returned to New Zealand from London - where he played gigs in dingy bars with his former bandmate John McCaffrey - when he came across Auckland Musical Theatre Company's online advertisement for Rent auditions.

After a quick memory-refresher on YouTube, he became absolutely focused on landing the part of Roger Davis, an HIV positive failed musician whose girlfriend kills herself.

He says he almost walked out of the audition when he was asked to perform party moves in front of hundreds of other prospectives, but luckily his terrible Mick Jagger impersonation got him through to the singing section. And now he's jumping off tables, hanging from scaffolding and tugging heart-strings as the emotionally twisted, and rather unwell character.

Murphy was heavily involved in both drama and music before he was swept into Idol when he was 17 and he says he's been looking at a way back into acting for some time. Rent is the perfect entry point, he says. Roger's songs - high rock ballads - seem to have been written for his voice.

"And the beautiful irony of it is, he is a failed rock star also, so there's some symmetry going on," Murphy jokes.

Since Idol, and then his band 5star Fallout's lost record deal, Murphy's been back and forth from jaunts songwriting and performing in Britain and America.

Would he say he had failed as a rock star?

"No, but I think there are people out there who would," he says, spurring fits of giggles from Crummer.

Crummer, who prides herself on being the veteran of the musical - "I've always been called mumma Crummer by the juniors, I love that" - is not who you would expect to find behind the brash and bitchy Killer Queen, or the staunch lesbian lawyer Joanne Jefferson of Rent. In fact she claims to be the exact opposite.

She's big on hugs and patting you on the hand as she speaks in a soft baritone. She loves to gush about all the talented people she works with - Kristian Lovercomb "oh, incredible actor, the real deal"; Rebecca Wright "oh, don't even get me started on her" - but gets coy when she is asked to speak about herself.

It took her a long time to like her bolshie character when she landed the role of the Killer Queen in 2007.

She had to get in touch with an angry side neither she, nor anyone she knew believed she had. In the end she channelled everything she had learned from all her beautiful diva drag-queen friends topped off with a bit of Tina Turner, and of course Queen.

"Now I'm fully trained at being a hard-arsed bitch," she giggles.

She's bringing it all back to her second run as Joanne, a staunch lawyer whose sexuality is her vice, and whose relationship with Maureen swings violently between love and hate. She was an understudy for the role when the production showed in Australia 11 years ago, as well as a member of the ensemble.

Crummer, who has been quietly tinkering away at her own little musical projects since We Will Rock You, says her heart leapt when she opened an email asking her to whether she would perform in the rock musical again.

"Annie Crummer needs a bit of scandal in her life," she laughs, adding, "I love being a gay icon." Yep, Joanne gets a bit of girl-on-girl action on stage.

As a Big Gay Out performer, Crummer has many homosexual fans as well as friends who are HIV positive.

"So there's part of me that wanted to lift their spirits," she says.

Neame says he realised Rent was very dear to Crummer when he took it on. "She had to be very confident that I would be ok, and that it would be a well-respected production," he says.

His is not a carbon copy but is as close as the Broadway original as is possible without a Broadway budget. "It's a beautiful production, it's hard when you have got something that was just so perfect to know what to change," he says.

Budget constraints mean the set and costuming are slightly different, but that's about it. The actors have perfected their American accents. Simon Coleman has designed an elaborate four-storey set using local graffiti artists to keep it looking contemporary.

If the tears in rehearsals are anything to go by, it's a show that will move its audience as much as it did in New York the 90s, and has in versions performed all around the world since.

"I'm finding because it is so emotional, it does get into you, it does get into your head," Murphy says.

To which Crummer leans over and says: "I tell you what darling, you're feeling it now, but this show will change your life. There is something about it."

LOWDOWN

What: Rent the musical by Auckland Musical Theatre Company
Director: Richard Neame
Starring: Annie Crummer, Michael Murphy, Rebecca Wright, Tama Waipara, Kristian Lavercombe.
When and where: The Civic, April 22 to May 7
Suitable for: An audience over 15 years of age. Adult themes (HIV and drugs), coarse language, sexual themes and some brief nudity.