I have a confession to make. I’ve never been a fan of Rent onstage; I’ve always found it to be too much of a period piece and far too American in tone and content to ring true for British audiences. It undoubtedly has a strong score - in fact it’s the show’s strongest asset and it remains in regular rotation on my iPod – but its weak plot always needed attention.

Therefore the news that William Baker, the former creative director to Kylie Minogue (and we gay boys love everything Kylie, don’t we?) was set to reinvent Jonathan Larson's rock musical for a new generation filled me with excitement.

At last somebody would have the time and opportunity to fine-tune the material its creator never had (Larson sadly died during the previews for Rent, 10 days before his 36 birthday) and Rent’s problems would finally be solved. Hurrah! Sadly, this wasn’t to be.

The first worries started as soon as I walked into the theatre and stared at the set in disbelief. Surely the all-white and steel über chic set with a distressed leather chaise longue at its centre wasn’t meant to represent the bohemian tenement block of the original, was it?

Where were the grim realities of cardboard city, poverty, muggings, gangs, drugs and the threat of AIDS hanging over the characters heads? All gone. In fact any sense of a gritty urban reality had been bleached away to reveal an insipid and emotionless core that was indeed rotten.

The already slim plot has now been rendered unbelievable and, worse, unintelligible, a fact not helped by the messy and sometimes quite bizarre re-organising of the scenes so that they no longer keep a strict sense of time, location, or narrative.

So how are the characters going to afford the rent on their apartment (remember, I said it was a slim plot)? Well, they could sell one of their Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts for a start and what about giving daddy a ring? These wannabe rebels come straight from the Home Counties and see poverty as a fashion statement, something to dabble in between looking for work.

Baker has squandered the promise and instead given us as a procession of pointless clothes horses and heroin chic waifs that wouldn’t look out of place in an MTV pop video, where it’s style over content and anything goes just as long as it looks pretty.

I won’t say ‘sound good’ because the score has been given a makeover, sorry, remix, that makes it more dated than the original and succeeds in removing all sense of the urgency of youth or the unique sound of their generation. Instead he’s replaced it with disco beats, club mixes and tepid tempos that remove all of the emotional punch of the original. This is one cast recording that won’t be making it into my collection.

On a plus point - yes, there is one - Denise Van Outen makes an impressive impression as the bisexual performance artist Maureen. Somehow she manages to take the worst number in the show and turn it into an extended showstopper that somehow manages to revitalise the audience out of its slumber. She has huge talent and is totally mesmerising, it’s just a pity she decided to demonstrate all this in such a lack lustre production.

Of other note is the fact that the narrator character Mark (a cute Oliver Thornton) has been given a gay twist and now lusts after his flatmate Roger (the decidedly butcher Luke Evans). It’s an interesting touch (and I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing the pair get it on), but I’m not sure its a necessary edition to the already high homo credentials - the show is full of lesbians and gay men and it celebrates their lives and loves, though why Angel has to succumb to AIDS via a sex club orgy, I just don’t know.

I notice from the programme that Baker has just launched a new underwear range called B*Boy. Well, may I suggest that he keeps his attentions there and not on the stage because his debut production lacks balls and is in need of bigger support.

Rent: Remixed? More like Rent: Remortgaged with the bailiffs about to break down the door and take away this sanitised nonsense.

Rent: Remixed, by Jonathan Larson, adapted by William Baker
Duke of York's
St Martin's Lane
London, WC2N 4BG
0870 060 6623

Opened 15 October 2007 and currently booking until 5 April 2008

Want more? Then buy the original cast recording of Rent or the film adaptation now and listen to Jonathan Larson’s excellent music. Get it online and and save some money to put towards Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent and the CD of Larson’s earlier show, Tick, Tick ... Boom!