Television review The solo performance of the Rent composer posthumously created a successful musical film Tick Tick … Boom!

Culture|Television review

The film was directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the musical Hamilton. In the background is the news of Larson’s untimely death just before his great success.

Musical

Tick, Tick … Boom! ★★★

USA 2021

Netflix

Jonathan Larsonin created a rock musical Rentin performances ended on Broadway in 2008, after more than 5,000 shows. 12 years earlier, in 1996, Larson was awarded Rent with the play Pulitzer and, among other things, the best musical Tony.

Before that, there was a Broadway premiere, preceded by an off-Broadway premiere, before which Jonathan Larson died, Jan. 25, 1996, of a sudden heart attack called aortic dissection.

Larson wrote and composed Rentin their own life experiences and Giacomo Puccinin La Bohème on the basis of the opera.

He had suffered from poverty and the pain of creation in New York for well over a decade, working in a nearby hut and wondering if the career of a music writer would ever become anything.

That anxiety, which culminated on his 30th birthday in 1990, was accompanied by Larson’s autobiographical performance of a single man and a rock band Tick, Tick … Boom!

About the performance The edited musical, which mainly successfully combines the joy and pain of creation, premiered on Netflix in November. The film is directed by his firstborn Lin-Manuel Miranda, who himself emerged as the bright star of Broadway with his giant musical Hamilton (2015).

Tick, Tick … Boomissa Jon (Andrew Garfield) tells of a week when he was working on a dystopic musical for eight years Superbia finally got to the workshop. In the workshop, the professionals practice the songs, after which they are presented to the public in the hope that musical producers will arrive.

One song is yet to be written, and the pressure is growing. Meanwhile, dancer-girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp) receives an offer to work as a teacher in a rural area. Best guy, skillful actor Michael (Robin de Jesus) has moved into the advertising industry and is moving from a shabby bundle to a luxury home.

The girlfriend Susania plays Alexandra Shipp naturally, but there’s no weird electricity between the actors. Picture: Netflix

Andrew Garfield is excellent in his role in places, and throughout the film he dispenses his energy aptly. At times, however, the difference with professional singers seems unnecessarily clear, and the purity that plagued the actor’s previous roles gnaws at bohemianism.

The smoothing is also the fault of director Miranda, who softens the feel of the streets of New York in the same way as Chris Columbus Rent in his filming (2005). The lepsuilu is accentuated in a song issue about the hectic Sunday of the corner dome, where the street pumps flash but are so neat that they are barely recognizable as passers-by.

So it is almost understandable that when a musical is sung “bum, bum, bum” the subtitle does not read “bum, bum, bum” but “butt, butt, butt”.