Tick... Tick... Boom!

Synopsis

Jonathan Larson s autobiographical musical of a success-starved artist, fast (and frustratedly) approaching his 30th birthday. It s the week of Jonathan s 30th Birthday. His girlfriend wants to get married and move out of the city - Tick... His best friend has bought a BMW and is moving uptown - Tick... and Jon s waiting tables, trying to write the great American musical, and feeling the pressure to choose between holding onto dreams or selling out for money - Boom! Jonathan Larson, who tragically died of an aortic aneurysm shortly before the opening of his huge smash hit Rent, first conceived of Tick, Tick...Boom! in 1990 as a one man musical monologue about a young composer on the brink of turning 30. David Auburn (who also wrote Proof) has taken Larson s multi-character musical monologue and turned it into a show for 3 actors portraying numerous characters.

Our Review:

10 June 2005

There's a nearly unbearable poignancy to knowing the fact that the desperate desire that drives Jonathan Larson’s heavily autobiographical Tick Tick Boom! actually existed, but that Larson never lived to see his own success.

This chamber musical chronicles the artistic and personal crises of confidence that an aspiring theatrical composer faces as he approaches his 30th birthday and his dream to create a new kind of rock-based Broadway show. Larson did in fact achieve a Pulitze Prize-winning Broadway smash just five years later with Rent (a rock musical that, like Hair before it, caught the pulse of its generation, and is still running in New York a decade later). But, as is well known now, he unexpectedly died, just ten days short of his 36th birthday (of an undiagnosed aortic aneurysm) on the eve of Rent’s first downtown preview.

Tick Tick Boom!'s collection of highly personal and individual songs is his...

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Latest User Review

195.82.123.181) - 12 August 2005:

The wonderful Neil Patrick Harris' departure from this thrilling little show (the best musical in town at the moment imo) gave me a perfect opportunity to go again to see his replacement. Christian Campbell lacks Harris' innate musicality and easeful command of the material but he is a fine actor, deeply moving, charming and very lovable. One perhaps gets more of a sense now of the character actually being Larson that one did with NPH. As his girlf, Cassidy Janson, already impressive when TTB opened, is now giving an all out star performance that must surely make her a frontrunner if/when they look for a British actor as Elphaba in "Wicked": she is jaw-droppingly good. Tee Jaye is also wonderful in a variety of roles but especially as the AIDS-stricken best friend. All in all, this remains an evening of joy, tears, terrific music and staging.....and an absolute must-see....

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