But Jonathan’s single-minded focus can also make him unbearable to his loved ones (even if Garfield’s too likable an actor to begrudge), and in its non-song scenes, the film is honest about how his self-involvement costs him those connections. Here, the character’s determined to hold on to his artistic integrity while his closest peers - ex-actor roommate Michael (Robin de Jesús), ex-dancer girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp) - are cashing out and getting adult jobs. Of course, “Superbia” was not the musical that put Larson on the map - “Rent” was, more than half a decade later - so don’t expect the film to end with the world suddenly discovering his brilliance.įrankly, it’s better that it doesn’t go that way, since happy endings may appease audiences in the short term, but they fail to acknowledge the difficulty of what someone as gifted as Larson was trying to do. By contrast, Jonathan’s jittery that his own magnum opus, a “1984”-inspired sci-fi tuner called “Superbia,” will get a one-off workshop performance at Playwrights Horizons, but is missing a key song. He feels like a failure, since his idol Stephen Sondheim (impressively embodied here by Bradley Whitford) made his Broadway debut at 27. That’s the whole idea of “Tick, Tick … Boom!”: It’s 1990, and Jonathan is days away from turning 30. This way, Jonathan’s social circle resembles the community he imagined for “Rent” - bohemians, including artists, queer folk and people of color - plus a behind-the-scenes contingent of theater-world types he hopes to wow with the workshop-within-the-show. They open with what looks like an archival videotape of one of Larson’s early-’90s stagings, except that it’s actor Andrew Garfield sitting at the piano, and they treat this as the framing device for a much larger ensemble. He and screenwriter Steven Levenson cleverly find a strategy to have it both ways. In 2001, “Proof” playwright David Auburn refashioned “Tick, Tick … Boom!” into a three-person production, and that’s the version that’s been staged multiple times over the past two decades (since Larson’s original incarnation required him to play multiple parts), but Miranda treats it differently. It’s not an easy project to adapt, requiring some smart retooling to speak to the wider audience the film (which kicked off AFI Fest two days before opening in theaters) stands to reach when it hits Netflix on Nov. In it, he fretted about not finding success before the age of 30, as if he sensed that his time was limited and his heart might go out.įor Miranda to choose “Tick, Tick … Boom!” as his feature directing debut speaks volumes about what Larson means to him. In an awful twist of fate, Larson died of an aortic aneurysm the day before “Rent” was to have its first Off Broadway preview, making the earlier project seem ironically prescient. Initially conceived as a one-man “rock monologue,” then taking on an unexpected new depth after the early death of its creator at age 35, Jonathan Larson’s “Tick, Tick … Boom!” is a show uniquely suited to the musical theater crowd - and not just the masses of fans Larson won over with “Rent.” It resonates especially strongly with the writers, performers and fellow creatives who can identify with how he articulated the struggle to be recognized, to make meaningful work and, according to the high bar Larson set for himself, to “wake up a generation.” People like Lin-Manuel Miranda.īefore “Hamilton,” before even “In the Heights,” Miranda was inspired by what Larson had accomplished with “Rent,” discovering in the show a fresh kind of musical, one characterized by a contemporary sound, characters with recognizable struggles and an uncommonly diverse cast.
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