"Tick Tick... Boom!" Ignites Bellmore Theater with Excitement

Rich Martino sure can relate to Jon, the character he plays in "Tick Tick... Boom!"

Jon's a frustrated playwright who's about to turn 30, and there's a clock in his head ticking like mad and driving him nuts.

"I'm turning 30 in July," said Martino, a Manhattan resident originally from Old Brookville. "I think this is helping me cope with it a little bit. I'm more established in my career than [Jon] was, but I can definitely relate to him."

Martino's connection to his role imbued his performance with authenticity and highlighted a smooth, solid performance of "Tick Tick Boom" by Frantic Fran's Theatre and musical director Anthony Brindisi at the Bellmore Theatre.

"Tick Tick... Boom!" closes Friday, March 26, with a 10:30 p.m. showing. Tickets are $20 or $18 for students with ID.

The show also starred Brianne Boyd, 23, as Jon's girlfriend Susan and Ryan Nolan, 25, as Jon's best friend, Michael.

Boyd, a Farmingville native who is studying voice at Hofstra University, captured the audience with superior vocals. Nolin, a Seaford resident who has appeared in shows across Long Island for the past 10 years, was particularly entertaining in his dance sequences and provided an added element of much-needed drama towards the end.

Martino, Boyd and Nolin meshed well on stage with on-point harmonies and believable dialogue throughout the performance, though it seemed a bit under-rehearsed at moments. And if Martino's Jon and Boyd's Susan seemed to lack chemistry on stage, it's completely intentional.

"The audience wants it to be a typical theatrical love affair," Martino said. "But if it comes across that we don't have a lot of chemistry, then we're doing it right because they're not meant to be."

With a cast of just three and a skeleton musical crew as well, to its credit Frantic Fran's production was easily more than the sum of its parts. The show found its peak during the song "Sugar," in which the cast exploded into a realistic sugar bender singing into Twinkies as microphones, and a dramatic high during "Come to Your Senses," capably sung by Boyd.

Written and composed by Jonathan Larsen, creator of "Rent," "Tick Tick... Boom!" poses thoughtful questions aimed at what it terms the "Boomer junior" generation, asking at one point: "What does it take to wake up a generation?"

Some might argue that what it took was Larsen himself. His groundbreaking show "Rent," which opened in 1996 and won a Tony and a Pulitzer, conveys a prolific message of self-awareness and activism. "Tick Tick... Boom!" is a musical cousin to "Rent" and an autobiographical show originally composed as a one-man rock monologue, but was rewritten by David Auburn for a three-piece cast and debuted Off-Broadway in 2001.

Friday's largely 30-and-under crowd was pleased with the overall performance.

"I'm a huge fan of the show and I thought it was a good production," said Ashley Grossman, 21. "There were distinctly different people up there every time."

Alysha Burnham, 22, liked the set - comprised mostly of metal scaffolding - but thought it was under-utilized and too static. "The acting was very good," said Burnham, of Syracuse.

Fran Nemeroff, who founded Frantic Fran's Theatre in 2001, has enjoyed working with the Bellmore Theatre for the past five years, doing one or two shows per year.

"I do shows that bring awareness to the community," said Nemeroff, a longtime Merrick resident who now resides in East Meadow. "I just find that everyone out here is doing all the typical shows, but I like to bring awareness of things that people don't acknowledge."

The company, which typically produces midnight showings of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" during the summer, has also staged performances of "Bare" and "Dog Sees God." Frantic Fran's Theatre will be staging "Rent" starting June 3 at the Bellmore Theatre.

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