If he hadn’t tragically died right before it opened off-Broadway. Jonathan Larson won the Pulitzer Prize and Tony, for the trailblazing musical Rent, which played on Broadway for 12 years and would have made him a fortune in royalties. Andrew Garfield plays the dedicated, hardworking young Jonathan who will sacrifice anything for his art. It is an intimate, tumultuous, glorious journey of the struggles of a young artist who feels the pressure of turning 30, unaccomplished, undiscovered, and of course poor. It is based on the late Jonathan’s Larson’s autobiographical musical. Such cameos include Judith Light as Jonathan’s agent, Bradley Whitford as a supportive Stephen Sondheim, encouraging Jonathan’s career, and Joel Grey, Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Beth Malone, André de Shields, and more as patrons at the Moondance Diner where Jonathan works.Tick, tick… Boom! is Lin Manuel Miranda’s feature film directorial debut. ![]() ![]() Part love letter to Larson (who passed away in 1996 at age 35) and part frenetic portrait of anyone who has felt the youth-stealing ticking of time, Miranda’s film is also an homage to Broadway itself thanks to its generous sprinkling of cameos of writers and actors who, like Larson, have pounded the pavement, shattered ceilings, and, through their work, offered affirming responses to anyone who has doubted art’s raison d’etre. None of this is enough to remove viewers from the story-the cast dazzles and the music pulses as if, it too, is running out of time, the subdivisions of each beat little percussive explosions. ![]() It is a little muddy that both worlds coexist when, in the original stage production, the cast of three had actors doubling roles, simplifying settings and clarifying narratives. Similarly, some moments will have Susan singing a song she influenced at the same time as Hudgens’ character. The narrative flits between present action (a performance of Tick, Tick…Boom!) and past tense (the real-life events that inspired it). It is mostly a lucid back-and-forth thanks to Miranda’s direction and Steven Levenson’s screenplay, but while it is clear that, on stage for the performance of Tick, Tick…Boom!, Vanessa Hudgens is singing the role based on Susan, it is less obvious that Joshua Henry is doing the same for Michael. ![]() On a bare stage at a performance of Tick, Tick…Boom!, Jonathan musicalizes the events of his life leading up to his 30th birthday: his deteriorating relationship with his girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp), increasing disillusionment with his actor-turned-advertising executive best friend Michael (Robin de Jesús), and all-consuming worry about his upcoming workshop of Superbia at Off-Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons-which needs more songs, more guests and more money to make it a smash. Garfield (Tony Award winner for the 2018 revival of Angels in America) plays Larson, embodying the late composer with electricity that surges from his fingertips whenever a hint of a song enters his mind and courses through his body all the way up to his curly hair, which looks zapped because, when you’re turning 30 and need to finish a musical, there’s no time for haircuts and combs. The movie, now available on Netflix, is a series of Russian dolls: a film adaptation of Larson’s musical Tick, Tick…Boom! about the creation of his never-produced dystopian musical Superbia, snippets from which are heard in the score alongside scenes from his Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Rent, which bookends the film as a way of framing Larson’s success and eventually accepted genius.
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