Theatre Horizon presents Jonathan Larson's tick, tick…BOOM!

How to live forever

It’s not the most high-budget production, but it’s still winning, thanks to strong performances from all three leads and some creative staging and blocking. The spring staging, directed by Robi Hager and Steve Pacek, was so successful that the production was nominated for four Barrymore Awards, including Outstanding Overall Production of a Musical.

tick, tick…BOOM! began life in the early 1990s as a one-man show by Larson, then a struggling Broadway composer. The show dealt with Larson, approaching his 30th birthday, lamenting his stagnant life and lack of success, weighing whether to give up on his theater dreams, before learning lessons about what truly matters, and getting a last-minute pep talk from Stephen Sondheim.

The real Larson, of course, went on to write Rent, the most popular and important new musical of the 1990s but would die suddenly of an aortic dissection at age 35 on the eve of Rent’s first preview performance in 1996. tick, tick…BOOM! was revived as a three-character piece for an off-Broadway run in 2001 and has been frequently mounted since, including as a Netflix movie back in 2021.

Once more, with feeling

As in most post-2001 stagings, the Theatre Horizon production is performed by three characters: Jonathan, his best friend Michael, and his girlfriend Suzanne. The Michael and Suzanne actors do additional duties as the other supporting characters, too.

Hager, the Broadway veteran who also co-directed, plays Jonathan, while Angel Sigala is Michael and Elena Camp plays Susan. The creativity extends to giving members of the on-stage band (guitarist Sean Townsend, drummer Neil Simpkins, keyboardist Brigette Rottman, and bassist Ben Powell) occasional lines.

The songs are propulsive and enjoyable, with the play hitting all of the necessary emotional beats it’s supposed to. As with all productions of this show, everyone watching will likely know that Larson will write a hit play but will not live much longer after the show's events. Therefore, he was both right and wrong to worry about his mortality at the time of his 30th birthday.

The show utilizes smart blocking, especially in the “Sunday” song—which is itself a homage to the song of the same name in Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George. This production has Jonathan arranging the positions of the waiter and waitress, just as Georges does in the Sondheim version. Also well-staged is the “Therapy” number, this time utilizing period-appropriate cordless phones (the Bucks County version made similarly creative use of phone cords.)

Whether you’re familiar with the show or not, the production of tick, tick…BOOM! is worth the trip out to Norristown.