tick, tick… BOOM!
Jonathan Larson (Book, Music & Lyrics); David Auburn, Script Consultant
New Conservatory Theatre Center
“Maybe I really have written the show that will reinvent musicals for our generation, the Hair of the ‘90s.”
With that hope, a struggling playwright and composer heads to a workshop production of the musical he has been writing for five years. Jonathan Larson’s own similar experience when composing SUPERBIAthat went nowhere even after a well-received reception that day in New York in 1989 led him to write his semi-autobiographical musical tick, tick… BOOM! He began performing in 1991 the one-hander tick, tick… BOOM! in which his character, Jon, recounts with a flair for humor and word-play the composer’s own feelings of doubts and disappointments leading up to that one-time performance. But in that failed musical are the elements of the musical Rent that Jonathan Larson goes on to write, a revolutionary creation which in fact did set the musical world on fire and laid the groundwork for future rock musicals like Spring Awakening, Next to Normal, and of course Hamilton.
After Larson’s tragic death the night before Rent opened on Broadway, playwright David Auburn reconstructed Larson’s original tick, tick… BOOM! for three actors: Jon, his girlfriend Susan, and his best friend Michael. This 2001 Off-Broadway-premiering version now opens at New Conservatory Theatre Center in an exceptionally well-directed production that sports much heart and humor. The cast of three bring much enthusiasm and personality to each of their roles with musical numbers that engage and entertain even when the delivery sometimes has mixed results.
Sitting at his piano, Jon tells us a tick, tick, tick sound he keeps hearing that time and again ends in a boom “like a bomb has gone off not too far away and the next one might be closer and I’d better watch out.” With his thirtieth birthday fast approaching and his career as a “promising young composer” so far not showing many signs of much promise, Jon (who pays rent by working as a waiter) is on the verge of a much-too-early, mid-life crisis. Not helping is his best friend and ex-actor, Michael, who now is a marketing whiz on Times Square and driving a new Beamer; his girlfriend Susan who wants him to leave New York with him to live on Cape Cod; and his Dad whose every phone call ends with “Write if you get work.”
All of this adds potent fodder for Jonathan Larsen to write brilliant, self-exposing and often laugh-out-loud lyrics to illustrate his own history of having jitters and second-thoughts as a young, not-yet-proven composer.
Getting the most out of those lyrics is where Cindy Goldfield’s direction and choreography in this NCTC production really pays off, especially in the context of Micaela Kieko Sinclair’s highly flexible, New-York-hinting scenic design where a few, often movable elements quickly set up scenes that can be played in full fun and folly. Three, rotating diner stools provide Jon, Susan, and Michael a perfect playground to sing “Sunday,” Larson’s wonderfully clever and lyrically hilarious homage to his hero, Stephen Sondheim, from his musical Sunday in the Park with George. Jon’s first, envy-filled tour of Michael’s new, lush apartment becomes a comically choreographed trip through closets, kitchen, and bathroom with Jon and Michael finding multiple ways to illustrate their sung lyrics of “No More” through hand movements and body-bending antics. A sudden attack of the sweet tooth sends Jon searching for a quick fix, leading to the three actors in a retro-sixties number where Hostess Twinkies become microphones as they twist and turn their way singing “Sugar.”
In each of these and more, Cindy Goldfield makes deliciously delightful decisions to maximize the talents of her cast.
Throughout, it is Larson’s lyrics and musical choices that are the real stars of the show. The rock-infused score (so ably played by the five-piece, on-stage band under the direction of keyboardist, Ben Prince) highlights songs that time and again honor Broadway (as in the aforementioned “Sunday” and in “Why,” the latter making references to both West Side Story and Mary Poppins). In a duet between Jon and Susan where their relationship is up for grabs, Larson further pays his homage to Sondheim through a set of fast and faster, repeating lyrics like “I feel bad that you feel bad about me feeling bad about you feeling bad about what I said about what you said …”.
But in the end, the real reason the obvious wit and the embedded wisdom of Larson’s lyrics work so well in this NCTC production is because of the joy, heart, and nuance Chris Morrell, Catalina Kumiski, and Marcus J. Paige bring to their embodiments of Jon, Susan, and Michael, respectively. The mounting self-pressures on Jon either to succeed or to succumb as an aspiring musical composer, the coming-to-a-head tensions between him and Susan and their diverging visions of their futures, and the desire of a secret-hiding Michael to secure financial stability for a friend he may not be around much longer to support – all of these serious threads intertwine so wonderfully with the musical’s ongoing humor because these three actors can pull off both demands well.
Catalina Kumiski and Marcus J. Paige also each play a variety of other one-time and repeating roles that give them ample opportunity to impress us with split-second switches of voice, accent, attitude, and age (and at least once for Paige, sex) – all most often drawing lots of laughs.
Musically, Catalina Kumiski brings clear, confident vocals that are particularly expressive and beautifully rendered in the night’s biggest applause-winner, “Come to Your Senses,” where she is an actress, Karessa, singing a number in Jon’s workshop of SUPERBIA. What makes this number even better is when we realize that Jon has given the lead in his musical a number that could very well be sung by the girlfriend he is on the verge of losing, Susan. Lines like “You’ve changed and I don’t know what to do” and “You’re on the air, I’m underground; signal’s fading, can’t be found” are another way Jonathan Larsen’s musical is so telling of the sacrifices he in real life very likely made to pursue his dream of a musical that could change the world.
Likewise, Marcus J. Paige impresses time and again with a singing voice that is magnetically attracting in its rich depth and emotional credibility, as demonstrated in the clarity and power he sings Michael’s parts in “Real Life.” In a number like his shared duet with Jon in “No More” or in the trio of “Sugar,” his Michael also sings in notes that exude lightness and fun even as they are sung with his baritone mellowness.
Chris Morrell brings zealous commitment to his singing of Jon’s many songs, with a voice that cuts through the air with an edge that at times can become overly piercing in its tonal quality. There is some tendency to over-sing even as he is so gallantly communicating the general feel of the song through a personality that pops and sizzles on stage. When singing in duet or trio combinations, the blending of voices comes and goes on a number of occasions when his voice fails to lower enough in volume or to ease in its cutting-edge character to allow total, harmonic melding. (These are perhaps opening night things that a music director will quickly correct.)
But as an actor conveying Jon’s – and thus to a large extent Jonathan’s – story of a struggling composer on the cusp of major, creative breakthrough, Chris Morrell more than succeeds. In the concluding song, “Louder than Words,” his Jon leaves us with what Jonathan Larson himself must have been thinking as he conceived and composed his Pulitzer and Tony award-winning Rent: “If we don’t’ wake up and shake up the nation, we’ll eat the dust of the world, wondering why.” New Conservatory Theatre Center’s tick, tick… BOOM! is a compelling, entertaining tribute to a composer who in fact did shake up the world with a musical Rent in which rock music lays bear for all to see the fight for survival by young, gay, straight, drag queen, punk-loving and impoverished artists in New York living in the shadow of HIV/AIDS.
Rating: 4 E
tick, tick… BOOM! continues through June 16, 2024 in a ninety-minute (no intermission) production by New Conservatory Theatre Center in the Decker Theatre, 25 Van Ness Avenue at Market Street, San Francisco, CA. Tickets are available online at https://nctcsf.org/, by box office phone at 415-861-8972, or by email at boxoffice@nctcsf.org.
Photo Credits: Lois Tema
