He is compulsive, self-involved, depressive, emotional, inspired, angry, and determined. Surrounding him are his supportive girlfriend Susan ( Alexandra Shipp ), who he criminally neglects his ambitious best-friend Michael ( Robin De Jesus ), struggling with many of the issues gay men confronted in New York in 1990 his unresponsive agent Rosa ( Judith Light ) and, occasionally, none other than Stephen Sondheim ( Bradley Whitford ) to lend a helping, inspiring hand.Īs it probably was in real life, though, the star of the show is unquestionably Larson, as portrayed by Garfield in the most effective performance of his career. Garfield plays the lead, Larson himself, as he is working on one of his last failed pieces, Superbia. Lin Manuel and Levenson add all of these details and more to create a richer world than the original’s, even if this world feels somewhat dated. But this was 1990, so NoHo was simply known as the “dead area between SoHo and Greenwich Village,” the AIDS crisis was still ravaging New York City, and theater tickets cost a mere $50. In the original show, a guy who is about to turn 30 waddles through a quarter-life crisis as his life-long ambition of being a successful Broadway producer does not take off, and he has to continue to live in the squalor of half-empty pizza boxes and soggy ramen noodle containers in some roach-infested, sixth floor NoHo walk-up. Garfield with Diretor Lin-Manuel Miranda (R) But the original piece was a solo piece (though an autobiographical one), so Lin Manuel added bits and pieces to the tale to turn it into a film, with the help of experienced stage-to-screen screenwriter Steven Levenson ( Dear Evan Hansen, the movie).
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Larson is best known for the smash hit musical Rent, though the film adaptation of his lesser-known piece is miles better than the wobbly 2005 movie that failed to replicate the original’s success. Tick, Tick….Boom! is adapted from the one-man musical of the same name, by Broadway composer Jonathan Larson. The end result may be a film that is a tad too self-referential for all but the most devoted Broadway audiences, but that nevertheless tells a touching story with Andrew Garfield at its emotional core, in a career-best performance.
But while the plot of his film, Tick, Tick….Boom! can make your head spin-or explode, as the case may be-if you pay too much attention, fear not, because Lin Manuel and his talented cast ease you right into the proceedings with soft rock, catchy lyrics, and bemusing, straightforward choreography. It seems somehow befitting that for his directorial debut, composing legend Lin-Manuel Miranda would select a musical adapted from a musical about making a musical.