The anxieties of growing older vibrated throughout the recently sold-out production of “Tick, Tick… Boom!” by Players’ Theatre Group (PTG). The quirky, small-cast pop-rock musical was powered by a kickass band, an amorphous foldable futon and a vibrant creative team.
In the autobiographical musical set in New York City in the 1990s, composer and lyricist Jonathan Larson—known as Jon (Cam Grealis)—breaks the fourth wall to tell the story of his personal and artistic struggles as he anticipates his 30th birthday. The tick-ticks that personify Larson’s anxiety grow faster and louder throughout the show, as Jon’s girlfriend Susan (Johanna Perry) pressures him to settle down outside of Manhattan and his best friend Michael (Chris Tipton Jr.) suggests he give up his dreams of musical theater for a more lucrative, stable career.
The recent PTG production, nestled in the intimate venue of Clark 400, featured an imaginative staging by co-directors Jonathan Morris and Ava “Ave” Tallarida. The seating arrangement immersed the audience in Jon’s rundown apartment, with posters of his artistic influences scattered across the walls. Morris and Tallarida utilized all areas of this makeshift apartment, at times setting actors free throughout the space as if each audience member were a guest at Jon’s birthday party. Morris and Tallarida broke up this comfort by contextualizing each scene with the larger story of America in the ’90s. Two televisions and one computer screen guided this narrative throughout the production; they jumped from archival weather reports to protests of the growing AIDS crisis to photos of Jon’s childhood. This seamless latticework of the real and the imagined highlighted the musical’s themes of political resistance without overshadowing the artistic soul of its intimate story.
Grealis led this story with impressive stamina and charming humor, and his climactic solo “Why” was just as spectacular as it was genuine. Tipton Jr. portrayed Michael with a relaxing ease before breaking hearts in the foreboding song “Real Life.” Perry’s elegant vocals and epic solo “Come To Your Senses” complexly balanced Susan’s independence with her love for Jon. This trifecta of actors triumphed as a fluent team full of energetic chemistry.
Still, the production of a musical centered around a 30-year-old man’s fears of growing older might not seem like an intuitive fit for a college campus. The PTG production rejected this notion by shamelessly exuding a youthful edge fueled by eccentric choreography courtesy of Maizy Windham and a great sense of humor. Morris noted of the contradiction between the actors’ and the characters’ ages that “it’s easy to abstract it away,” emphasizing that “we all deal with anxieties and stresses.”
The relevance of this production was solidified by its brief yet poignant resolution in which Jon and his friends discover a voicemail from Stephen Sondheim, Larson’s greatest musical inspiration and artistic mentor. Theater students on campus might have recognized Sondheim’s voice as that of Professor Christopher Bohan, a hallmark of Case Western Reserve University’s Department of Theater and an artistic advisor to many, including Morris himself. As Sondheim told Jon, “You’re going to have a great future,” PTG told young artists on campus that despite the many tick-booms of life, they have reason to maintain hope for their great future, too.