tick, tick boom!
tick, tick … BOOM! Newline Productions @ Parade Playhouse Theatre NIDA, 12 – 16 July, 2011
Jonathan Larson led a fairy tale life of the young musical theatre composer struggling to make it in New York City. He scraped a living as a waiter; lived in a cold-water, walk up apartment with Matt, his best friend from schooldays, while working on his music and dreaming of the big Broadway break-through. And so does Jonathan, his alter ego in this autobiographical mini-musical that started out as a one-man cabaret performed by its creator. Its title refers to two heart-thumping moments of panic that are followed by catastrophe as the would-be Stephen Sondheim hits 30 – and is still waiting tables.
As Jonathan, Tyran Parke is charming, beguiling and quickly convinces that turning 30 before his new musical – the gruesomely named Superbia – has a chance to set Broadway on its head is an unthinkable horror. Parke is one of the best singer-actors we have and he’s perfect as the Peter Pan composer. (Jonathan is so anxious about the all-important workshop performance of Superbia he can’t even plink out “Happy birthday to me” on the piano and when Parke tells you this, you empathise rather than want to slap him.)
It’s undoubtedly why his girlfriend of two years is so patient and sympathetic. As well as playing the longsuffering Susan Melle Stewart also takes on other roles – a diner customer, marketing whiz, Jonathan’s mother and the winsome ingenue Karessa who has a showstopping moment in Superbia. And it’s down to Stewart’s real-life talent that she actually does achieve the show’s most musically and vocally thrilling moment with her solo in Superbia.
Jonathan is blessed not only with a supportive girlfriend but also a great boyhood friend and room mate in actor-turned-successful marketing executive Michael. When the show opens Michael – a delightfully droll Justin Smith – is moving on from their unglamorous poverty. He’s got a BMW and has bought an apartment where the bath is in the bathroom rather than in the kitchen. Susan too is talking about moving on – she’s a dancer who’s getting nowhere and knows she never will; New York is a hard and unforgiving city for such a practical realist. Michael urges Jonathan to have a go at marketing – it’s creative after all – and these are the tick, tick, ticks Jonathan can hear in his mind.
Jonathan’s foray into Madison Avenue is brief and hopeless. Asked to sit in on a brainstorming session to find a name for a new lo-fat spread, he comes up with “Chubstertoot” and is shown the door. (Personally, I’d buy a tub of Chubstertoot if Tyran Parke sang the jingle, but that’s probably not the point.) Back at the SoHo garret Jonathan tries to get hold of his agent who hasn’t spoken to him in six months and realizes that it’s 1990 and he’s going nowhere.
With the support of choreographer Simone Salle, director Jay James-Moody makes the most of the Parade Playhouse space. There’s depth and movement that makes the frequent transition between words and song flow easily between the actors and the live four-piece band. Lighting designer Richard Neville and set and costume designer Claire Moloney conjure New York atmosphere and SoHo grunge in a set that’s mainly lights with a suggestion of an apartment. It’s a classy production and beautifully performed.
In the end – 90 minutes no interval – Sondheim comes to the Superbia workshop although he leaves before the end and maybe 30 isn’t going to be so bad after all. The end is bitter-sweet and optimistic as the three actors and ten characters front a really tight and excellent band (Alex Ash, Daniel Maher, Eric Hutchen and David Manuel) to give their all for Larson’s not brilliant music and witty lyrics.
Musical theatre fans will know that rather than the nerdy sounding Superbia, Larson actually went on to write the hugely successful and Tony Award-winning Rent. But he wasn’t around to enjoy any of it as he died suddenly, age 35, the night before the show opened. Now that would be a musical within a musical.
