Show: tick, tick…BOOM!
Music and Lyrics: Jonathan Larson
Book: Jonathan Larson and David Auburn
Director: Jaci D’Ulisse
Music Direction: Erica Silver
Where: Open Arts Performing Arts Center
Company: Rooftop Theatre Collaborative
The Show
Tick, tick…BOOM! (hereafter TTB because the punctuation to letter ratio in the title is too damn high!) is an musical memoire written by Jonathan Larson (played by in this production by Tam Garcia) about his life and work in 1990 as he neared age 30. The initial conflict of the show derives from fear; that he doesn’t have much to show for his writing career as a 30 year old and as a result may never make his mark. His story is filled with many characters, from his agent, to ad executives, to Stephen Sondheim himself, but the two most important people in his life are his best friend Mike (Darryl Thompson, Jr.) and Jon’s girlfriend, Susan (Jill Bradshaw). As the show progresses, Jon becomes less concerned with how he is keeping himself from success and more concerned with how he is keeping himself from the people in his life. Somewhat predictably (but far more satisfying than the alternative), Jon realizes by the end of the show that he still has plenty of time to make his mark and that the only thing stopping him is his own mounting self doubt in the face of adversity. Unfortunately, this realization comes at the expense of the people who are most important to him.
Let me start by saying that, like my last review for Phantom, I did not know a lot about TTB before I went to see the RTC production. I knew that it was by Jonathan Larson (of Rent fame), and I had listened to the cast recording once about 5 years ago. I can freely admit that I didn’t much care for the cast recording without having context for the songs, but I am more than willing to recant that opinion now that I have seen this production. First, the book, which is structured as a one man show (there is a lot of direct address and storytelling as literal stories being told by the star/narrator), but with two additional actors playing all of the other parts (that, surprisingly, would not exist in a one man show). The reason for this structure isn’t an accident: the only performances of TTB during Larson’s lifetime were actually as his one man show. After his untimely death and the incredible success of Rent, TTB was revived and reworked by David Auburn into a 3 actor show using most of the original dialog and music.
One last note on the story here: meta narrative. Much like the first show I reviewed, Phantom, this show is impacted incredibly by its surrounding meta narrative. Unlike Phantom, however, TTB’s meta narrative works only in its favor. Much of Jon’s conflict arises from the fear that he will never get to make his mark because he is about to leave his 20s without having made it. Larson wrote the show years before the success of Rent, which was without a doubt the most influential musical of the 1990s (if you want to say that Lion King was actually the most important, then you are wrong). As a result, we as the audience get to engage in some dramatic irony that the author wasn’t even aware of when he wrote it. It also frees us to not really worry about whether he will or won’t achieve success and instead focus on how the story is being told rather than what the story is saying. This is important because TTB is filled with a variety of plot devices, references (a lot of references) and character moments that get a chance to breath and be experienced in a way that a more plot dependent shows don’t get.
Beyond this bit of unintended dramatic irony is a second layer of meta narrative that the audience gets to enjoy (enjoy is possibly the wrong word) as a bit of philosophical rumination: Larson is afraid he won’t make his mark, which he unknowingly does, but he is also known for having famously died suddenly at a young age because of an undiagnosed heart condition. Not only did he eventually achieve the artistic success he desired, but in enjoying the show we get to see that he really wasn’t a one hit wonder. This show is full of moments that are both funny and touching, loud and vulnerable, displaying an obvious skill for the art form. This left me wondering what was left unfinished by a life cut short, which is almost the exact opposite of the show’s intended theme and focus. This makes the script unintentionally even more complex than it might otherwise have been.
The Great Stuff!
First and foremost, the three actors in this show were phenomenal. Thompson and Bradshaw wear a variety of hats in a way that is both entertaining and immersive. You stop concerning yourself with them as actors and instead focus on the character choices that they are making right away. Garcia, a rock band vocalist, puts on a hell of a show for someone with little to no acting experience. Every once in a while there would be a moment where you could tell he lacked the experience of the other actors, but his performance was extremely effective and occasionally moving.
I could spend a lot of time talking about things these actors did well. They were all exceptional at every aspect of performing and brought the show to life. However, I think that might turn into just another several paragraphs of positive adjectives and adverbs without much additional substance. Instead, I’d like to focus on some creative choices that really improved the production and what make those choices good.
First, the show is written for three vocalists to be singing all of the parts. This doesn’t necessarily seem like a strength at first glance; after all, more singers means the composer can come up with more interesting chords with a fuller sound. But TTB leverages its advantage in a different way. If you are writing a show with more singers, you don’t just have the option to write music with fuller sound, you have to write music with fuller sound or the music will seem underdeveloped. And that music is going to be more difficult for somebody in your cast, because somebody is going to have a weird harmony. And with all of those people in the cast, somebody with a weird harmony is going to sing it wrong. I’m not just saying this theoretically, but from personal experience. When a show is extremely complicated with a big cast in a community theatre setting, someone is going to be singing something wrong. And then what’s the point? TTB avoids this with its cast size, leaving the music with three part harmonies that are overall much easier to sing and still sound great.
This brings me to a related, but still important choice made by Rooftop Theatre Collaborative: only having three actors. Yes, the script is written for three people. However, as stated before, two of those actors play multiple roles. A less confident company with a less capable director might have thought “if we split these parts up we can have a bigger cast and sell more tickets to family members and friends.” But again, if you do that you’ve forced yourself to find six or 10 great singer instead of just three. That’s three to seven more actors that could potentially have a hard time learning the music. It’s three to seven more chances to get an actor that doesn’t take learning his or her lines seriously. Make no mistake, sticking with the stated number of actors was a choice, and it was the right choice to make.
One last thing before moving on to the next section, there is a serious emotional turn that happens near the end of the show that was really moving. I can’t get into specifics without spoiling anything, but even if I hadn’t enjoyed the rest of the show, that turn would have been worth the ticket price. Suffice it to say that TTB benefits from subversion of its premise.
The Not Great Stuff…
I’ll come right out and say it: I’ve committed the cardinal sin of aging past 30. The main damage that this has done to me is that I suffer I’m-about-to-turn-30 pity parties even less now than I did when I was still in my twenties. This made the initial premise of the show a big turnoff to me. As the show evolves passed this cliché it became a lot easier to warm up to it, but the first half an hour or so hinged entirely on embracing the idea of meta narrative I described earlier in this review because the conflict wasn’t compelling.
Beyond this premise issue, there was only one scene that bothered me. Spoilers: Jon and Susan break up about halfway through Act II. It’s weird to call the scene unrealistic, because it may well have been based on real life, but I think, if it was, that it might reflect Larson’s own bias in remembering the event (if it ever happened). Susan, a character previously show to be intelligent and thoughtful essentially breaks up with Larson because she fears how he will react to failure, except she does it about two weeks before his workshop has a chance to fail (or succeed). It makes her come off as extremely impractical and petulant (which maybe the real Susan was, I don’t know) in what appeared to be a writer’s attempt to create some convenient conflict to move the plot along. Everything before and after that scene was fine, but it did seem like it was conflict in search of a better idea.
Moving away from the script there isn’t much else to say here. The set was simple but effective, the directing did exactly what it needed to and got a lot out of a small show and the actors were universally great. The only real fault in the technical aspects of the show came down to the lighting. Early in the show, Garcia was on a platform completely in the dark. It reminded me that maybe a more experienced actor would have had an easier time finding his light. Except, at that moment I realized that there was no light to find. This was a problem throughout the show. In this space in particular the top of the proscenium is quite low and can cast a shadow on the upper levels of the stage. Somehow the lighting designer and scenic designer didn’t know this, but it forced both of the male leads’ heads to be cast in shadow whenever they were acting on the upper platform. It was an unfortunate mistake, both because it was distracting and would appear to have been easily fixable.
The Shining Stars
Tough for me to come up with Shining Stars for this one because I’ve already commented on basically every aspect of the production. The best I can come up with right now were the various references to musical theater history sprinkled throughout. If you don’t know musical theater they are not distracting, but if you do then you can have fun trying to pick them out like a scavenger hunt. Also a shining star: finding out that Suburbia actually was a show written by Jonathan Larson that I hadn’t heard of before.
The Verdict
This show already closed, but if RTC ever does an encore performance you should see it. The show isn’t often performed and this particular production was stellar. Rooftop Theatre Collaborative’s mission statement, as described in the curtain speech, is to provide patrons with opportunities to experience works that speak to a modern audience. So far they seem to making a lot out of a little and I look forward to their next production.
The Venue
Open Arts PAC is a 80 or so seat theater with a slight thrust stage and not a lot in the way of technical options (no fly space, enough lights for a couple of separate washes and some specials). The audience is completely configurable; this was the first time I’ve been there that they’ve set up the audience with tables and chairs. But it can be tough to figuring out seating arrangements because the optimal seating plan for 40 people is very different than the same for 80 people. In this case there were a few risers of seats in the back for spillover, but instead of being used for that, those back seats seemed to fill up first, keeping most of the audience away from the action. However, this building has multiple theater companies that run shows in its space, and the number of companies is now growing, so hopefully we will see more productions there in the future.
Who do I think I am? 