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Known worldwide as a production that changed the trajectory of contemporary musical theater, Jonathan Larson’s Rent profoundly influenced a generation of theater artists, including a young Lin-Manuel Miranda, who first saw the show in the late ’90s.
Before Rent, though, there was Larson’s semi-autobiographical Tick, Tick … Boom!, a smaller-scale, 1990-set rock musical about a New York playwright struggling to find his voice as the days and minutes tick down to his 30th birthday. As he was first coming to prominence with his Broadway production of In the Heights, Miranda played the lead in a New York staging of Tick, Tick … Boom!, laying the groundwork for the current film adaptation, his feature directorial debut.
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Tick, Tick ... Boom!
Venue: AFI Fest (Red Carpet Premieres)
Release date: Friday, Nov. 12
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, Vanessa Hudgens, Robin de Jesús, Joshua Henry, Bradley Whitford, Tariq Trotter, Judith Light, Michaela Jaé (Mj) Rodriguez
Director: Lin-Manuel Miranda
Screenwriter: Steven Levenson
After the overwhelming success of Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winner Hamilton and his collaborations on animated family movies, Miranda emerged as something of an heir apparent to Larson, with a similar ability to capture the specific tenor of the national mood and distill it into an individual song or an entire creative work. Despite the resonance of Larson’s source material, particularly evident throughout Rent, Miranda’s approach to Tick, Tick … Boom! lacks a similar sense of immediacy, as if he’s regarding the musical through a haze of nostalgia, seeking to persuade viewers to fall under the creative spell that clearly still lingers for him. It’s not an entirely convincing tactic, although hard-core musical theater fans are likely to find it fairly irresistible.
When Larson was writing and developing Tick, Tick … Boom!, he was just another broke New York theater composer, working a day job at the downtown Moondance Diner, a key setting in Miranda and Dear Evan Hansen screenwriter Steven Levenson’s dynamic reimagining of Larson’s work.
In his frequently self-referential style, Larson created the character of Jon (Andrew Garfield) as the protagonist of Tick, Tick … Boom! A struggling playwright who waits tables at the diner, he’s trying to complete Superbia, the futuristic dystopian musical he’s been working on for the past eight years (which was also Larson’s first original musical theater piece).
This familiar setup introduces the production’s first song, “30/90,” which finds Jon stressing out over his upcoming 30th birthday and lamenting his lack of creative and professional achievement. The filmmakers use a staged performance of Tick, Tick … Boom!, with Jon leading a small electric band in a selection of songs, to frame the central narrative, consisting of dramatic scenes as well as more elaborate production numbers featuring Jon’s girlfriend, Susan (Alexandra Shipp), his gay roommate and childhood friend Michael (Robin De Jesús), and the supporting cast.
Although it’s initially a rather unwieldy structure, once the film hits its stride the alternating onstage and on-set scenes provide a palpable sense of variation and energetic pacing. Most of the first act focuses on Jon’s preparation for a workshop staging of Superbia and his sense of time slipping away as his friends begin to move on from the theater world.
Michael has already quit his unsuccessful acting career for a lucrative job in advertising and rented a fancy new apartment, the setting for “No More,” an amusing duet between Jon and Michael celebrating the consumer comforts of an upscale lifestyle. Susan, meanwhile, is considering shifting away from modern dance performance and accepting a teaching job that would take her away from New York, a source of conflict with Jon that prompts a painful examination of their relationship in the downbeat “Therapy.”
With the workshop performance of Superbia only a few days away, Jon faces a creative crisis writing a song for performer Karessa (Vanessa Hudgens) to fill a hole in the second act. Stephen Sondheim (Bradley Whitford), Jon’s musical theater idol and occasional creative mentor, originally pointed out the problem to him after an earlier workshop reading of the piece, but the young writer hasn’t yet been able to draft anything suitable.
In a last-minute burst of creative energy, he composes “Come to Your Senses,” by far one of the film’s strongest tunes and a standout from Hudgens. Other highlights include “Sunday,” an entertaining multicharacter performance staged at the Moondance Diner that forms the film’s biggest Broadway-style production number, and “Why,” Jon’s solo lament concerning many of the social problems he’s observed in New York, particularly the AIDS crisis that’s raging through the city’s creative community.
Garfield, who studied musical performance to prepare for his role, latches onto the Larson character with inspired enthusiasm, digging deeply into Jon’s creative struggles and conflicted emotions, consistently surfacing the bittersweet rewards of his artistic life path. Displaying considerable range as Susan discovers her own journey, Shipp also delivers on her character’s solos and duets. While de Jesús doesn’t get as many singing opportunities as the other principals, his intensely interpreted dramatic scenes more than compensate.
Miranda handles his directorial role (and a brief cameo) with assured professionalism, foregrounding the characters with fluid camera movement and precise editorial pacing, but it’s a somewhat sterile style, more akin to a concert film than an immersive narrative feature. However, he’s adeptly supported by cinematographer Alice Brooks’ affinity for a variety of camera formats and aspect ratios, as well as the talented team of editors Myron Kerstein and Andrew Weisblum.
Larson’s untimely death at the age of 35 prior to Rent’s off-Broadway premiere deprived the theater community of one of its leading lights, but with his prolific output, Miranda clearly has further artistic achievements ahead of him that will certainly entertain audiences well into the future.
Full credits
Venue: AFI Fest (Red Carpet Premieres)
Distributor: Netflix
Production companies: Imagine Entertainment, 5000 Broadway Productions
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, Vanessa Hudgens, Robin de Jesús, Joshua Henry, Bradley Whitford, Tariq Trotter, Judith Light, Michaela Jaé (Mj) Rodriguez
Director: Lin-Manuel Miranda
Screenwriter: Steven Levenson
Based on the musical by: Jonathan Larson
Producers: Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, Julie Oh, Lin-Manuel Miranda
Executive producers: Julie Larson, Steven Levenson, Celia Costas
Director of photography: Alice Brooks
Production designer: Alex Digerlando
Costume designer: Melissa Toth
Editors: Myron Kerstein, Andrew Weisblum
Music: Jonathan Larson
Casting: Bernard Telsey
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