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by Paul McLane Jonathan Larson. Photo by Matt O'Grady. Cover Photo: Stephen Gregory Smith, by Kara Tameika Watkins.
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The autobiographical story of a composer confronting the big 3-0, a guy who waits tables while not quite making it in the New York musical scene, would be suitable grist for a pop rock musical anyway; but there’s an extra, guilty frisson in watching tick, tick…BOOM! and knowing that in real life the writer was only a few years away from both a monster smash and sudden death. Age is the question confronting both character and writer in Jonathan Larson’s musical, which makes its DC-area premiere at MetroStage this season. Larson died at 35 just before the off-Broadway opening of his most famous work, Rent. Tick tick is based on his earlier life and gives audiences a chance to hear music written before the more familiar production. The story takes place in 1990, when Jonathan is about to present a workshop of a new play. It tells of a man who faces obligations familiar to many people in theater: a girlfriend who wants to settle down, and friends who are far ahead of him financially. He’s plagued by anxiety and hears in his head the sound of time passing and pressure building. No Plastic Pants Smith got the casting call for tick, tick… BOOM! from Carolyn Griffin, Producing Artistic Director of MetroStage, and didn’t hesitate. It’s a format for which Smith feels his voice is well suited. “My voice just wants to sit there in that kind of music. I love me a good rock and roll show.” To do tick, tick… BOOM!, he believes, is the next-best thing to Rent. “Actually, it’s better than Rent because there’s no plastic pants, no one who dies and comes back and sees cows — just good music and an honest, straightforward story. The songs are much more emotionally bare; they’re less full of pretense than Rent; it’s not all tuned to the same guitar amp level. It’s definitely a rock show, but there are times when it’s just solo piano.… There are so many levels of subtlety in the score, yet there’s balls-to-the-wall rock.” The actor, who will make his MetroStage debut as Jonathan, is the same age as the character and has asked himself many of the same questions. He has thought about selling real estate. Beyond acting, he has paid his bills through odd jobs like managing a dog day-care center and working part-time at TICKETplace. On stage he has made his living in roles like the 10-year-old Jack in Into the Woods; now he is on the verge of an age milestone that can be unsettling for an actor often cast based on the perception of youth. “I go back and forth on it. It means I am finally (I think) turning into a man. It’s scary when I am auditioning for a young role that I have been called in for, and the young guy actors — as I call them, ‘fetuses’ — start coming in with their little 18-, 20-year-old selves, and I start to think, ‘Oh God, I might as well just leave.’ I contemplate draining a little bit of their blood on the way out to replenish my youth and then decide not to, against better judgment.” Smith is blessed by genetics in having what he describes as a baby face, but he wonders where his career is headed when it comes to parts. The answer is unclear. In the past year, he has auditioned for roles as far apart as a father at Imagination Stage and a 10-year-old at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. “A lot of people move into their 30s and play the leading man; that’s more Will Gartshore than me. I’ve never been dashing. I’ve always wanted to be the prince and often ended up being the clown; it usually ends up in the middle — the clown prince perhaps.” For many Washington musical fans, Stephen Gregory Smith made his first notable mark as Jimmy in Signature Theatre’s 110 in the Shade, which earned him the Helen Hayes Award as Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Resident Musical in 2004. Other Signature roles include Billy in One Red Flower and the Balladeer/Lee Harvey Oswald in Assassins. He was hardly a month out of school when he auditioned for, and won, his first role at Signature: Yonkers in Gypsy, understudying Tulsa. The show launched an ongoing relationship with that theater. “Not that Signature has a company; but they do tend to use the same people. Because I started there so early and they’ve had me back so many times, I can’t help but think of it as a sort of home.” Indeed, tick, tick at MetroStage is likely to have a Signature feel thanks to the presence ofi director Matthew Gardiner, lighting designer Mark Lanks and music director Steve McWilliams. Many in the tick, tick band performed at Signature in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Other shows Smith has done for Signature include The Highest Yellow, Allegro, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Hedwig and Grand Hotel. “I’m a Cancer, so I’m very loyal. I get very set in a pattern; I’m a little obsessive-compulsive too. Stepping out of bounds sometimes is a difficult thing for me. I get a lot of shows at Signature and turn down a lot of auditions at other places because I knew what Signature was, I knew the people and that it would be a safe environment to create in.” But he also has appeared at Olney Theatre Center, Ford’s Theatre, The Kennedy Center, Wolf Trap Opera, Arena Stage and Round House Theatre. The Sound of the Radio Director Matthew Gardiner hears Larson’s distinctive voice in tick, tick. The composer’s work, he says, “sounds like the 1990s, what was on the radio at that point, the same way Hair sounded like the music of its time period.” Now many writers emulate Larson, trying to bridge the gap between theater and what one hears on the radio. “He’s had a huge impact on me as a director and someone interested in the theater,” continued Gardiner, who is 23. “Rent came out when I was in sixth grade. That was a CD I played constantly; I must have seen the show three times.” He detects Larson’s influence in the work of composers in his age bracket. “So many young people, their voices in the musical theater are taking on a more contemporary sound.” That includes Gardiner’s twin brother James, who is co-writing a new musical, Glory Days, to be staged at Signature next year. “Tick, tick was a show Larson used to do by himself as a one-man (piece) in downtown theaters,” Gardiner said. “A lot of producers had seen him doing it and found it interesting but couldn’t sell it, so they started discussing with him doing another piece that would be more universally appealing.” After Larson’s death, David Auburn adapted the script and turned it into a three-actor play. The show is Gardiner’s first solo professional directing project. “Matt Gardiner has established himself in DC with a terrific reputation for both directing and choreography,” Carolyn Griffin of MetroStage remarks. “I really wanted to get a young sensibility for this pop rock show, and Matt’s name kept coming up.” While the show deals with the common and basically gentle question of a man facing his 30s, it cannot help being darkened by the knowledge that Larson’s life took a stunning upturn and reached its sudden end almost simultaneously. A New York Times article about Larson and tick, tick by David Auburn bore the headline, “He Wrote of Time Running Out, And It Did.” Tick, tick may leave 2007 audiences wondering what else Larson might have written. Gen-Xers who look upon his music as the voice of youth might also reflect that, had he lived, he’d soon be facing 50. Paul McLane appeared as Benito Mussolini in Margherita for Gamba Frattura Productions in the 2007 Capital Fringe Festival. tick, tick…BOOM!, at MetroStage, Oct. 11 – Nov. 25. |
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