"I'm the future of musical theater." Jonathan Larson (Andrew Garfield)
Director Lin-Manuel Miranda (Tony and Pulitzer-winning creator of Hamilton) shows his genius was not a just one-off. In tick, tick . . .Boom! Hamilton revives the memory of Jonathan Larson (Andrew Garfield), the creator/composer of Rent, a contemporary rock musical that inspired a new generation of shows for Broadway.
That Larson should die at 35, the night before the preview of Rent, lends a melancholy air to this adaptation of his autobiographical musical and this film's influence by his first failure, Suburbia, inspired by Orwell's 1984.
Tick shows the evolution of Larson's signature realism, a fulfillment of his agent Rosa Stevens's (Judith Light) exhortation to write about what he knows. Poverty, paying rent, facing down rejection, protesting for justice, and HIV friends dying in droves are issues he knows and will exploit in his iconic musical.
Yet for this film, he is promoting his tick . . ., and while the lyrics are uneven and scattered but generally first-rate, it involves a too-large cast including aliens. Although Garfield is gawky and endearing in equal measure, Larson's work has the mentoring of Stephen Sondheim (Bradley Whitford), who I understand, knows something about musicals. Whitford, by the way, does a credible, impressive imagining of Sondheim.
The ticking boom of time in the title has several reference points, not just Larson's impending death but the dynamic change of Broadway Larson ignited. Andrew Garfield does a yeoman's job of giving life to Larson, who has a naivete, energy, and self-centeredness that bespeak the lasting influence he has had on the modern musical.
In some ways, Miranda has done that himself with this exciting, melancholic musical about musicals and the geniuses who lose their lives creating them. Netflix.
