Tick, Tick…Boom!
–Shakespeare, Cymbeline
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Jonathan is living on borrowed time too. He doesn’t realize it–but we do, because he’s the alter ego of Jonathan Larson, the creator of this autobiographical musical. When Larson penned the one-man show that evolved into Tick, Tick…Boom!, he didn’t know that he would indeed go on to write “the Hair of the 90s”: Rent, the Broadway hit about Lower East Side artists coping with drugs, AIDS, and homelessness. He also didn’t know he would die of an aortic aneurysm at the age of 36, shortly before his masterpiece’s much anticipated opening in 1996.
If Larson’s posthumous celebrity gives Tick, Tick…Boom! marketability, the show confirms that Rent was no fluke. In both distinctive, openhearted scores, Larson displays a knack for blending pulsing rhythms and catchy melodic hooks with the character-based conversationality of musical theater. Highlights include Jonathan’s driving “30/90”; his urgently horny duet with Susan, “Green Green Dress”; a droll depiction of the couple’s rambling late-night conversation, “Therapy”; “Sugar,” a comically upbeat ode to Hostess Twinkies and other junk food; “Come to Your Senses,” a powerful pop ballad carried over from Larson’s Superbia; the anthemic climax, “Louder Than Words”; and “Johnny Can’t Decide,” a trio for Jonathan, Michael, and Susan characterized by almost painfully pretty intertwining harmonies. Nothing here seems destined for the status of Rent’s rousing finale, “Seasons of Love,” but these songs are as good as many of the later tunes.
As structured by “script consultant” Auburn, Tick, Tick…Boom! employs three actors: one playing Jonathan, the other two playing Michael and Susan and dividing several smaller roles between them (including Jonathan’s loving if not very verbal dad and a brittle chain-smoking agent). The charismatic Wilson Cruz brings tremendous charm and underlying pathos to Michael, and Nicole Ruth Snelson is an intelligent and appealing Susan. Jonathan is played by two actors: Christian Campbell (from the film Trick) at prime-time performances and Trey Ellett at matinees. I had the opportunity to see them both, and Ellett is superior to Campbell in every way. Campbell’s Jonathan is sexy but surly; his anxiety reads as hostility, and while he strikes undeniable erotic sparks with Snelson as Susan, it’s hard to understand what she sees in him when they’re not in bed. Ellett, by contrast, is empathetic and instantly likable–and believable as a man described as a bit of a dork. For Jonathan’s pre-midlife crisis to be touching rather than annoying, we have to like him. Ellett, who looks a bit like the young Matthew Broderick, conveys a self-deprecating humor, romantic warmth, and emotional variety that Campbell lacks. He’s also a much better singer; Ellet’s voice is husky, emotive, and free of Campbell’s huffing and puffing, the result of poor breath support.
