tick, tick… BOOM! – theatre review

Sensitive, poignant and energetic, tick, tick… BOOM! is a wonderfully engaging musical about the trials and tribulations of a struggling, angst-riddled creative artist who is about to turn 30 with success continuing to elude him.

His name is Jon and he is portrayed with high-octane verve by Luigi Lucente (Wicked, Jersey Boys). It really is a “jump-out-of-your skin” performance. If ever an artiste deserves success, Lucente ensures we – the audience – are continually rooting for Jon. The year is 1990 and he lives in an apartment in SoHo, in Lower Manhattan, which he shares with his best mate, Michael (Quin Kelly – Saturday Night Fever), whom he met at camp when they were both aged eight. Michael, a former actor, gave that away to become a high-flying, highly travelled market research executive. He has all the accoutrements of success, including a flash new Beamer, and is about to move out of the rundown space he shared with Jon and into a flash new pad.

And then there’s Susan (Angela Scundi – Into the Woods), Jon’s girlfriend of two years – a dancer, who teaches ballet to rich kids to help make ends meet. She has watched Jon’s toils up close and personal and is ready to leave the big smoke and move to New England to start a family, but he is resisting. Jon is intent on claiming his place in the world of musical theatre by composing a truly memorable work.

To that end he is putting the finishes touches to a score he has been working on for five years – one that is about to be workshopped in front of a live audience. It is called Superbia. Full of doubt and still waiting tables just to get by, Jon presses on in his quest for ultimate success – Broadway recognition.

Scundi fills multiple roles, including an attractive star of Superbia, Jon’s all but absent agent and his mother, while Kelly also appears as Jon’s dad. Scundi has a big voice, magnificently highlighted in a dramatic solo, one of 14 songs that are so integral to the success of the 90-minute show. Importantly, it doesn’t have an interval … and it certainly doesn’t need one because had it, it would only have served to interrupt the flow of proceedings, which occur at pace.

tick tick … BOOM! emanated from “a rock monologue” – a one-man autobiographical musical called Bohemia – that Jonathon Larson wrote and starred in. In it, Larson focused upon a fraught artist who wondered how much longer he could sanely balance his passion and goals with the stumbling blocks of life – relationships, job, money, worries and fears. As the producers of tick, tick … BOOM! so correctly point out, thankfully Larson persevered … because his next creation was the nineties rock musical RENT. Larson died in 1996, aged 35. It was the night before RENT opened off-Broadway. In 2001, Bohemia was reconfigured into a three-actor chamber musical by Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Auburn and renamed tick, tick … BOOM!

Today there are five in the cast, including two additional vocalists, Rebecca Heatherington and Mitch Roberts. In fact, it is a highly talented ensemble that bring to life the rigours of trying to “make it” as an artist with a penchant for creativity. tick, tick … BOOM! is an uplifting coming of age story that remains as relevant now as when Jonathan Larson wrote Bohemia in 1990. I loved it.

I must also comment on the wonderful set crafted by creative director and production designer Sarah Tulloch. The stage – measuring about five metres wide by three and a half metres deep and barely raised 30 centimetres off the ground – has as its centrepiece a piano, which a highly proficient Luigi Lucente constantly plays. Ten raw light bulbs of various shapes and sizes hang from the roof.Behind the actors is a coarse material (“cloud cloth”) floor to ceiling backdrop onto which a variety of coloured lights reflect different moods as events unfold. A copious quantity of sheet music rings the stage – tossed hither and thither. On the stage itself, apart from the piano, are only four simple wooden chairs and a piano stool. To the left and right are the contents of a garage – everything from a surfeit of musical instruments to ladders, used paint tins, an old heater, tool box, suitcases and much more. The items, though purposely chosen, look like they have been thrown together and they work a treat, reflecting Jon’s troubled mindset.

So please venture in to Chapel off Chapel in Prahran for a night to remember. tick, tick … BOOM! is only playing until 1st May.

Alex First