tick, tick… BOOM! – Netflix

tick, tick… BOOM! – Netflix.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Creators of art love to see themselves, so in every art form there is some form of light reflected back upon the creator, as if they are saying: “look how hard this is? It’s really tough, but I managed it, so maybe I can have some form of self-validation.”

Such works, especially in the realm of film and theatre, tend to acquire a cult status within their own industry. Those who have laboured to make movies and plays see their lives projected out for the masses, as their creators take the advice “write what you know” as literally as possible. Less often are those works good enough, let alone speak to a wider truth, to be able to break through to a wider audience.

tick, tick… BOOM!, in its stage musical form, has definitely acquired the status of an artwork beloved by its industry. An autobiographical take on a self-styled “future of musical theatre”, Jonathan Larson’s musical tells of his struggles to stage a workshop version of a dystopian, satirical sci-fi musical, Superbia (one imagines it’s something like We Will Rock You, except with artistic merit instead of a book by Ben Elton).

As “Jon” struggles to write the Act II song for his leading lady’s character all his mentors have told him he needs, he feels there is a ticking time bomb in his future – his impending 30th birthday, after which he will be old and a failure.

At which point, anyone over three decades old will be saying, “oh, please”, but it’s part of Jon’s character that he is so caught up in this self-imposed deadline he is missing everything important in his life: his dancer girlfriend Susan has accepted a teaching job upstate, his best friend and former flatmate Michael has news he needs to share – but these landmines are being ignored because of an imaginary bomb.

Larson wrote and initially performed tick, tick… BOOM! as a solo piece; the version we see on stage, and which forms the basis for Steven Levenson’s screenplay, was expanded after Larson’s death by playwright David Auburn into a three-person chamber piece.

But that original solo work is brought back as a framing device for this film adaptation. Andrew Garfield’s Jon can therefore deliver his thoughts and narration without having to rely on voiceover, fourth wall breaking or other cinematic devices. We jump between his own onstage performance of tick, tick… BOOM! and the life events his musical portrays.

And just as Auburn helped to open out the story on stage, Levenson and first time director Lin-Manuel Miranda expand the story even further here. The key pieces from the stage musical are here: an ode to Sunday brunch at the diner where Jon works, only slightly adapted from a number from Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George, will satisfy Broadway fans with cameo after cameo, while Jon’s dalliance with the corporate world Michael lives in provides both plenty of laughs at the same time as increasing tensions between the two best friends.

As Michael, Robin de Jesús – one of the standout stars from a previous Netflix stage adaptation, The Boys in the Band – brings a depth and emotional complexity which rarely exists outside of Jon himself. Conversely, Alexandra Shipp’s Susan becomes a cipher, only there to represent an obstacle to Jon’s goal of becoming a great composer.

On stage, the actress playing Susan would also play Karessa, the actress who performs in Jon’s workshop. Such role doubling doesn’t really work on screen, so Vanessa Hudgens takes on the latter role. Miranda works this to the film’s advantage in one scene, where the comedy number ‘Therapy’, sung by Jon and Karessa, is intercut with the “real life” break up of Jon and Susan.

But it also means that the show’s greatest number, ‘Come to Your Senses’ – the one which the fictional Jon has been struggling to create – has to be converted into a duet between Shipp and Hudgens. On stage, a successful production of tick, tick… BOOM! can be subtle about things, utilising the role doubling to emphasise that the song sung by Karessa is also being sung by Susan. The unsubtle approach taken here may be the only way to achieve the same effect on film; that doesn’t stop it having a reduced impact.

What also lands differently on film is the fallout when Michael reveals his HIV status, a real time bomb compared to Jon’s imagined one. On stage, Jon’s reaction – to run away and quite literally compose himself, as Michael sings ‘Real Life’ – doesn’t jar as much as it does here. On film, the selfishness of that reaction leaps out far more; while Jon’s dismissive attitude to Susan is called out by her, there’s no such blowback for what is essentially Jon making his friend’s illness all about him.

But it is impossible to hate Garfield, who imbues Jon with the sort of humanity that outweighs his many character flaws. And the resolution of his relationships with both Michael and Susan are wrapped up with the sort of tidy bow that Hollywood loves.

There’s one more element of the stage show which transfers successfully to the screen: the shadow cast by Stephen Sondheim. On stage, the composer attends the Jon’s workshop but the latter can’t even bring himself to utter his idol’s name.

Here, Sondheim appears at not one, but two, workshops, played both times masterfully by The West Wing’s Bradley Whitford. His cameo includes a delightful back-and-forth with another composing mentor, played by Richard Kind. But rather sweetly, for Sondheim’s final appearance in the film – an answerphone message in the closing moments, another carryover from the stage musical – Whitford was unavailable to pick up the recording of the rewritten scene, so Sondheim himself can be heard leaving a message of support for his mentee.

In the film, after Superbia Jon is told to “write what you know” for his next piece. That next piece, of course, turned out to be tick, tick… BOOM!.

And while Larson’s name will forever be associated with Rent, the groundbreaking Broadway show he never got to see, for me tick, tick… BOOM! remains his greatest work.

And yes, despite it being one of those dreaded pieces of art about how terrible a life it is to be an artist, it is a masterpiece for the masses.

Scott Matthewman