Tick, Tick...Boom!: Lin Manuel Miranda Honours the Late 'Rent' Author, Breathing Life into Earlier Work
By Thom Ernst
Rating: A
It's too soon to celebrate the resurge of the movie musical—assuming you agree that such a resurgence is worth celebrating. But in the weeks to follow, and the weeks leading up to now, musicals are making their presence known.
In the Heights, and Dear Evan Hansen already made the rounds, while Lorne Michaels's good-natured and surprisingly infectious TV series send-up of the genre Schmigadoon! awaits its second season. And all evidence suggests that Steven Spielberg's upcoming version of West Side Story will be a success.
Now there is Tick, Tick…Boom!, the directorial debut of whiz-kid Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda from the stage performance by the late Jonathan Larson. Larson wrote Tick, Tick…Boom! as a chronicle of his struggle to write a Broadway musical.
Andrew Garfield and Alexandra Shipp in Tick, Tick…Boom!
Intended initially as a one-person show, Tick Tick…Boom! grew into something more significant with more characters, backup vocals, and a skeleton-crew band. Miranda brings some of that early sparse experience to the screen, shuttling between full-on movie musical scenes with moments of Andrew Garfield as Larson performing the show on stage.
Tick, Tick…Boom! is presumably Larson's true story, the kind of true story that begins with a narrator announcing that "Everything you see is true, except for the parts (Jonathan) made up.”
Though not specifically stated, we can assume that the spontaneous musical numbers are also an extension of Larson's imagination, something of which Miranda takes full advantage.
Garfield plays Larson as a man ready to explode. His every movement and gesture reveal a desire to be heard and seen, so that bursting into song hardly seems irrational.
Who’s to say that spontaneous song and dance is not the inner reality of a Broadway musical hopeful? Even if Miranda's musical scenario is too fanciful to be believable, it is enthralling enough to make us wish it were real.
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
Musical numbers like No More, a song celebrating the financial freedom of Larson’s best friend, Michael (Robin de Jesus) resonate with an exaggerated flamboyance, as if Miranda anticipates the fears of those who find musicals cringeworthy and so, purposefully, cranks-up the kitsch. They sing, they dance, get used to it.
Tick,Tick…Boom! chronicles Larson’s struggles with his (unproduced) science-fiction musical Superbia. But Miranda stacks the film with evidence of Larson’s inspiration for his greatest success, Rent. This is New York City in the ‘80s at the height of the AIDS epidemic, further tarnished by the disheartening anti-gay narrative from the likes of Senator Jesse Helms and the Moral Majority.
Time is ticking; and the voices from concerned friends to consider other options sound more like betrayal than support. Larson, on the cusp of his 30th birthday (egads!) laments his lack of success and Bohemian lifestyle, unlike his idol, Stephen Sondheim (Bradley Whitford) who was producing Broadway hits in his early 20s.
If there is anything about the story that strikes an uncomfortable chord, it's Larson's manic need to succeed before 30—a heavy weight to carry for those of us with unfinished projects who recognize 30 as a distant rumour.
But Larson has found one champion in the industry, Ira Weitzman (Jonathan Marc Sherman) willing to mount a reading for Larson’s science-fiction musical. Now Larson has a week to pull together a band and write a much-needed song for the second act.
But life has a way of invading art: His all-too-perfect girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp) has been offered a job outside the city, his hydro is about to be cut off, Michael needs to talk, and a HIV positive co-worker has been hospitalized.
Tick, Tick…Boom! packs a great deal of joy into a story that pushes a more modern and darker take on the make-it-or-break-it mantra of classic ‘40s musicals. The songs are engaging and staged with a feel-good choreography that consists less of formalized dance (for the most part) than it does gleeful bursts of movement.
The film is set amongst the Bohemian faction of New York of the period, but it doesn't quite have the off-center tilt of a Bob Fosse film—Fosse being a formidable player in the Bohemian musical scene. Still, Fosse’s influence shows up in numbers like Therapy, where on-stage antics correspond with off-stage drama, a la Cabaret. And the film has a curtain call number that's not unlike, although less stylized, the ending in Fosse's All That Jazz.
Tick, Tick…Boom! was a success for Larson, but real success still lay ahead. Larson’s Rent is credited with jolting Broadway musicals into a new era. Whether or not it really redefined what a Broadway musical can do and say, it is a phenomenon that awarded Larson his place in Broadway history.
Sadly, Larson's victory comes posthumously. Larson died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 35 on the night before the first public performance of Rent. His untimely death fuels his character with a poignant mysticism that can only come from someone dying so young and under such a tragic paradox.
It seems appropriate for Miranda to direct Larson's story, given that had Larson lived, they would likely have been contemporaries. Miranda does well by Larson, bringing the play to the screen and telling Larson's story with compassion and, most importantly, with music.
Tick, Tick…Boom! also stars Vanessa Hudgens and Judith Light as Larson’s agent (and when was the last time you saw Judith Light in a movie?)
Tick, Tick…Boom! is directed by Lin Manuel Miranda and stars Andrew Garfield, Vanessa Hudgens, Judith Light, Jonathan Marc Sherman, Alexandra Shipp, and Robin de Jesus. Tick Tick…Boom! begins in select theatres on Friday, November 12, and on Netflix November 19.