For 'Rent,' before 'Rent': Phoenix Theatre opens season with 'Tick, Tick..BOOM!

You may expect to have  "Seasons of Love" as a daylong ear worm if you catch "Tick, Tick...Boom!" at Phoenix Theatre before the end of the month.

The hit song from "Rent," the musical through which Jonathan Larson achieved wide fame, much of it posthumous, has a precursor phrase or two in the earlier show. Semi-autobiographical to a wrenching degree, the '"Rent" predecessor opens the Phoenix season in a well-designed production with a splendidly compatible three-person cast under the direction of Emily Ristine Holloway.

"Seasons of Love" is of course rooted in our perceptions of time— how we mark it, how we attempt to speed it up or slow it down, and just what we make of certain milestones. Time is of the essence, a capacity audience was reminded on opening night Friday.

Jon, from whose viewpoint the story of "Tick" is told, dreads his 30th birthday, which he is about to reach without fulfilling a self-imposed goal of success in musical theater. (The Phoenix itself is at the youth-clinging age of 39, a signature gag of the almost forgotten comedian Jack Benny.)

The protagonist's temporal anxiety would seem kind of jejune if the focus were not a celebrated creative artist whose life was cut off by a possibly misdiagnosed heart condition when he was just 35.  Larson shares that terminus with a certified genius, one who benefited from a much earlier start, embossed with the prodigy label: W.A. Mozart. 

Gabriela Gomez, Eddie Dean, and Patrick Dinnsen in the comic song "Sugar."

The fair seed time of Larson's soul was much more conflicted, as "Tick, Tick" suggests. Jon deals with an elusive agent, a hard-won workshop opportunity that seems to go nowhere, his barely hidden jealousy of a best friend (an ex-actor moving up in the corporate world), and a dancer girlfriend determined to escape the grimy pressure cooker of New York City. The year is 1990, stamped in song by  "30/90," which is reprised in the one-act show just before the company wraps things up with the greeting-card sentiments of "Louder Than Words."

Perched high toward the back of Zac Hunter's sturdy, versatile set, an adept four-piece band accompanies the songs flawlessly. Instruments and voices are precisely balanced, with few exceptions. Pop balladry and punchy rock ebullience set the parameters of the musical style. 

Larson was so steeped in the pop culture of his brief time that parody, inadvertent or otherwise, isn't  hard to detect. "Come to Your Senses," a showcase for a singer Jon is smitten with in the workshop for his fledgling show "Superbia," has the mounting anthemic  quality and rising key changes of  "A Song That Goes Like This" from "Spamalot" (2004). Obviously, Larson saw the possibilities for mocking such numbers long before Eric Idle put a fool's cap on them.

The song is among the show's conspicuous solo displays. This one is for Gabriela Gomez, who as the temptress Karessa also does several other brief turns amid her main role as Susan, Jon's restless girlfriend. Best friend Michael has a stirring showcase with "No More," and it is capably brought off by Eddie Dean, who also has some comic cameos as other people in Jon's orbit. As Jon, Patrick Dinnsen is prominent throughout in presenting the Larson figure in speech and song. All three display smoothly integrated vocal ranges and emotional flexibility.  When their voices combine, they do so seamlessly (credit to music director Teneh Karimu). they show satirical pizazz in "Sunday," a song skewering the brunch customers who frequent the diner where Jon works.

I like that there's a history of actors of color in the role of Michael. There's something a little stifling about the show insofar as it seems to privilege Youthful White Angst and seeks to make us care about one of countless YWA sufferers with show-biz ambitions. Granted, this one turned out to be a special case, even if he was from White Plains. But his best friend is black, at least for this show's purposes. I grew up in a Michigan township named Grand Blanc, so my background too echoes the various resonance of whiteness.

Michael may have his doubts about whether the switch to the well-heeled rat race was worth it, and he carries another burden that we learn about late in the show. But it's refreshing that he has retrained his talent and intelligence toward higher professional status than a struggling theater professional usually enjoys. Dean's opening-night performance — its dignity, appeal, and pathos — blended with the hopes and setbacks portrayed by Dinnsen and Gomez as Jon and Susan.

The details are well-managed in this production, down to Katie Phelan Mayfield's projection design. It's all lively and ingratiating, but it's also about finishing the hat, in the immortal phrase of Jon's (and Larson's) idol, Stephen Sondheim —"how you watch the rest of the world from a window while you finish the hat."

[Credit: Ghostlight Photography]