Desc: Hope Mill Theatre: Rent: Directed by Luke Sheppard. With Jocasta Almgill, Blake Patrick Anderson, Tom Francis, Ahmed Hamad. Rent is a rock musical with music, lyrics, and book by Jonathan Larson and is loosely based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème. It tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists struggling to survive and create a life in Lower Manhattan's East Village in the thriving days of Bohemian Alphabet City, under the shadow of HIV/AIDS.