The Jonathan Larson Project at Southwark Playhouse Borough – review

The cult of adoration that has grown up around Jonathan Larson, revolutionary American composer of Rent, is understandable. Here’s a man who, after years of struggle, of honing his songwriting craft, died at the age of 35 on the eve of the 1996 premiere of a masterpiece.

He won a posthumous Pulitzer for the show, plus three Tonys. Andrew Garfield played him in tick, tick… Boom!, the Lin-Manuel Miranda-directed film adaptation of the other musical produced in his lifetime. Now his songbook is being scoured for every last note, for every sign of the genius that was so suddenly lost.

The result is The Jonathan Larson Project, first seen in a concert version in 2018, and then transferred to CD. It was revived in a full production off-Broadway in 2025; the Southwark Playhouse version – directed by John Simpkins with Livi van Warmelo as music director – is its UK premiere.

It opens gently with the six-strong cast watching grainy footage of Larson in his New York apartment, filming his bookshelves and lamenting his lack of success “push, push, pushing for years and years.” Then the picture shifts to him sitting at a piano, singing “Greene Street”, written in 1983.

The cast turn away and launch themselves into the song, dancing energetically around the piano covered with dustsheets in the centre of Nate Bertone’s rough-hewn setting. From there, it’s on to a nifty, 90-minute run-through of the hits Larson never had. Broadly they fall into four categories – songs written for theatre such as the agonised “Rhapsody” (about poverty and waste), or the melancholy “Piano”, with its touching refrain “Oh piano, you saved my soul”.

Then there are cabaret songs written for specific occasions including “Iron Mike” (about the Exxon Valdez oil spillage) or the gloriously blousy “Break Out the Booze”, with its insane rhymes (lousy/drowsy/nowsy) and wild energy. There are pop songs such as the synth-heavy “Out of My Dreams” and the sentimental “Pura Vida”, written with an eye on commercial success. And finally, there are satirical pieces with the force and impact of Tom Lehrer crossed with Stephen Sondheim’s observational wit.

The problem with the show, curated with love and dedication by Jennifer Ashley Tepper, who trawled through Larson’s archives to find the songs, is that it treats all this treasure trove with equal reverence, when some of the songs are clearly written by a man learning his craft and others – such as the magnificently crazed “Hosing the Furniture”, in which a woman loses her mind while keeping her house clean – are works of near genius.

What becomes more and more striking as the evening progresses, however, is just how far ahead of the curve Larson often was. “The Vision Thing”, written in 1989 for National Lampoon’s review show, is a savage dissection of the corruption of the political process; “The Truth is a Lie” is both notably prescient about the post-truth world in which we all now find ourselves and smartly, devastatingly funny. “Valentine’s Day” is a remarkably emotional depiction of a man trapped in a masochistic relationship.

Everything is performed with enthusiasm but perhaps slight over-emphasis by a strong-voiced cast, with Natalie Kassanga and Imelda Warren-Green both outstanding. They work hard at all points; perhaps at moments, less would be more.

As it is, The Jonathan Larson Project is a must for fans of his work – both fascinating and slightly melancholy. For those who know less of his life, a little more detail about some of the numbers would have helped but there is no doubt by the close about the talent that was lost, a vital link in the chain of musical theatre.