A Creator and His Doubts
‘Tick, Tick ... Boom!’ Recalls Jonathan Larson
Charles Isherwood
June 26, 2014: “Compromise or persevere?” The question has a fearsome urgency for the protagonist of Jonathan Larson’s Tick, Tick ... Boom!, an aspiring musical-theater composer staring down his 30th birthday and wondering whether it’s time to put aside his lifelong ambition to be an artist and settle for a second-choice life. In the lovably scrappy, terrifically moving revival of the show being presented by City Center Encores! as part of its Off-Center series, the struggling composer, Jon, is portrayed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose funny, anguished and heartbreaking performance throbs with a sense of bone-deep identification. Not too many years ago, Mr. Miranda was himself a struggling young musical-theater composer living hand-to-mouth in the New York, teaching high school English while scribbling songs on the side. He, of course, would find success when his musical In the Heights transferred to Broadway and won the Tony Award for best musical — before he turned the appalling age causing such agony for Jon. Larson’s tragic history, by contrast, has become sorrowful lore in theater circles. He died at age 35, just before his musical Rent opened Off Broadway, and went on to become an era-defining Broadway hit.
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