Instead, as Jon explained in the film Tick, Tick… Boom!, Superbia is a satire set in a distant emotionless, poisoned future, where “ the vast majority of humanity spend their entire lives just staring at the screens of their media transmitters, watching the tiny elite of the rich and powerful, who film their own fabulous lives like TV shows.” The concept is eerily familiar to the current state of humanity and the kind of entertainment consumed, hinting at reality TV shows like Keeping Up With The Kardashians. However, the Orwell estate forbade him from directly adapting the novel, so he deviated from the themes presented in the book. Larson even intended for his musical to be staged in the very year of 1984 - this was successfully executed by Michael Radford’s 1984 film adaptation. While the film hits Netflix next week, I’d love to see it with a crowded theatre of musical lovers – especially for that diner scene.Originally, Superbia was a rock retelling of George Orwell’s cautionary novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He performs his numbers with so much energy and chutzpah it looks like he’s been doing musical theatre for years.
Garfield, lanky and over-caffeinated, his hair swept up into a curly mop like the real Larson, loses himself in the role of an artist trying to break out without breaking down. Jesús delivers a soulful, sensitive turn as Michael, while Shipp is sympathetic in an under-written role and Hudgens oozes charisma in her songs. And he gets honest, lived-in performances by the actors.
While there are clear markers of the era – among them the Macintosh computer – Miranda doesn’t fetishize the period or its fashions. There’s a real fluidity to the film’s scenes, and great use of New York locations. Because many of Jonathan’s friends are in the theatre, it’s not out of place for them to break out into song at, say, a party, or even at the diner where, in the film’s funniest scene, a who’s who of Broadway perform Larson’s clever homage to one of the canon’s most sublime songs.Īnd, as with the film Cabaret, most of the film’s numbers take place onstage in the show’s workshopped musical, where Vanessa Hudgens’s Karessa and Joshua Henry’s Roger frequently represent Susan and Michael. That’s a lot to juggle, but Miranda and screenwriter Steven Levenson (Dear Evan Hansen) have created a clear and effective way to present the story. And since his best friend/ex-roommate Michael (Robin de Jesús), who left theatre to make money on Madison Avenue, has moved into a swanky new condo, he’s behind on the rent. At the diner where he works on the weekend, an HIV-positive friend and co-worker has suddenly become sick. His girlfriend Susan (Alexandra Shipp) has received a job offer to teach dance out of state and wants to know if he’ll join her. Meanwhile, he’s got some personal problems. He’s also procrastinating writing a crucial song for the show’s second act. His agent (Judith Light) won’t return his phone calls, so he attempts to invite the city’s musical elite – including his idol, Stephen Sondheim (Bradley Whitford in an uncanny impersonation).
It’s part documentary, part musical and 100 per cent bursting with love for the art form.ĭays from turning 30, Jonathan (Andrew Garfield) is obsessed with an upcoming workshop of a musical he’s worked on for years. After Rent’s success, and Larson’s tragic death (he died days before Rent’s first performance), the show’s book and structure were tweaked for a cast of three and performed off-Broadway.Īnd now in a film version directed by Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda – a guy who knows a thing or two about developing hit musicals – it’s been rearranged once again to tell a meta story about a talented, struggling composer who would go on to write a landmark piece of theatre about love and friendship during the AIDS crisis.Īlthough not nearly as groundbreaking as Rent, tick, tick… BOOM! is entertaining enough, and first-time director Miranda has created something that, unlike another recent adaptation, actually works effectively on film. Larson conceived BOOM as a rock monologue, and he performed it with a band in 1990 at a well-received workshop. Less well known is his earlier show, tick, tick… BOOM!, an autobiographical piece about life as a struggling writer of musicals. Jonathan Larson’s revolutionary 1996 rock musical Rent is firmly part of the musical theatre canon. Opens Friday (November 12) at theatres and begins streaming on Netflix November 19.
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