Review: 'Tick, tick...BOOM!' at Sacred Heart University

But I write musicals with rock music. A contradiction in terms. Broadway's about 60 years behind anything you hear on the radio. You can't put rock onstage – real rock, not warmed-over easy-listening pop, not plastic imitation 50s bubblegum. Nevertheless, that's what I'm trying to do with ‘Superbia.’

Could my show end up here? Is it good enough for Broadway, that magical street of dreams? Is it too good for Broadway, that shameless commercial whore? It's that raging mix of envy and contempt that's so ... healthy. - Jon in ‘Tick, Tick….BOOM!
Fairfield, CT - ‘Tick, Tick... Boom!’ (styled as tick, tick... BOOM!) is a musical written by American composer Jonathan Larson, yes THAT Jonathan Larson, who won a Pulitzer and three Tony Awards for his musical ‘Rent.’
‘Tick, tick...BOOM!’ tells the story of an aspiring composer named Jon, who lives in New York City in 1990; the ticking is the sound of his mounting anxiety as he faces his thirtieth birthday. Mr. Larson’s musical was completed in 1991 and is an autobiographical “rock monologue’ that was first entitled ‘30/90,’ later renamed ‘Boho Days’ and finally given the current title. The piece was originally written for only Mr. Larson himself with a piano and a rock band and was intended to be a response to his feelings of rejection caused by the disappointment of a previous work entitled ‘Superbia,’ which is mentioned in the storyline. After the composer’s untimely death in 1996, ‘Tick, tick… BOOM’ was revised and revamped by David Auburn as a three-actor piece that ran Off-Broadway and had an American national tour. Now one actor plays Jon and two others play his best friend Michael and his girlfriend Susan as well as all the other roles in the show.
After hearing Mr. Larson’s family and colleagues talk about this little show on the director’s cut of the film version of ‘Rent,’ I had always wanted to see a production of this earlier work. The fact that the composer had died so young and unexpectedly told me that the poignancy would be palpable in a musical about his short career. So I jumped at the chance to catch a production at my alma mater, Sacred Heart University in Fairfield (‘81, ‘89 MAT.) There were no dorms when I attended for my undergrad years and definitely not a theater department and the halls looked very different from when I worked on my graduate degree. I was probably one of the few members of the audience in ‘The Little Theatre’ that knew we were all sitting in what used to serve as the university’s chapel.
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I enjoyed this show even more than I expected and would recommend it to ‘Rent’ fans for sure, but it stands alone as a fine early musical of a gifted composer. ‘Tick, tick...BOOM!’ runs at Sacred Heart University through Sunday, Nov. 5 and tickets are selling fast. Next up at SHU will be ‘The Tempest’ with a 1920’s twist running Nov. 17-20 at 8:00pm in the larger Edgerton on campus, so I will be heading back to the alma mater once again.
Photo by SHU Theatre Department
Nancy Sasso Janis is one of the newest members of the Connecticut Critics Circle and continues to contribute to OnStage.