YOUNG York company NUEMusic Theatre present Rent, New York’s most electrifying rock-opera of the 1990s, at 41 Monkgate, York, from July 18 to 20.

Jonathan Larson and Billy Aronson’s 1996 update of Puccini’s La Boheme relocates the story from the Parisian Left Bank to New York’s East Village and the contemporary problems of AIDS, drugs and poverty.

Rent, with its blend of rock, blues, gospel and soul music, is set between two Christmases and revolves around two squatters, former junkie punk singer, guitarist and composer Roger Davis and videographer Mark Cohen.

Roger is HIV positive, and so too is his new girlfriend, Mimi Marquez, a heroin-addicted exotic dancer at a sadomasochist club. Meanwhile, Mark’s performance-artist girlfriend, Maureen Johnson, has dumped him for a woman, Joanne Jefferson.

The show opens with Roger trying to come to terms with the suicide of his HIV-positive former girlfriend and striving to write a knockout song before he dies.

NUEMusic’s production is directed by stage director and film-maker Cal O’Connell, working in tandem with musical director Thomas Marlow, a 21-year-old postgraduate student at the University of York, and choreographer Jed Berry from Leeds. Their cast includes Aran MacRae as Roger, Lee West as Mark, Lauren Sheriston as Mimi, and Robyn Grant as Maureen.

“We’ve moved the story from 1996 to now because everything in Rent relates to what’s still happening now,” says Lee. “It allows us to connect directly with the audience just by wearing certain clothes.”

Robyn believes Rent packs as much of a punch as ever.

“I really think it defined a generation in terms of how it changed musical theatre as it addressed such a big issue at the time – and the way people responded to the subject of AIDS was to write a rock musical,” she says. “It’s not a perfect musical but shows like Spring Awakening came about because of it and it’s still so relevant.”

Aran adds: “Rent shows that musical theatre can be a form of education as well as a form of entertainment.”

NUEMusic will make Rent fresh for 2013. “The show had become something it’s not: a pop musical set in the 1990s, full of singers, but it’s not that,” says Robyn. “Strip it back, take away the film version and any previous stage versions, and just use ourselves as a group of friends who suit our characters and can make it an exciting new performance of an old show.”

Tickets for the 7.30pm performances can be booked online at ticketsource.co.uk/nuemusictheatre