Jonathan Larson was one of Broadway’s and musical theatre’s most iconic writers, composers and lyricists. Thirty years ago, the day before the acclaimed musical Rent had its first performance, Larson sadly and untimely passed away from a heart condition, never to see his most famous work roar to deserved success.
Three decades on, and, ironically, just a few months before a new production of Rent comes to the West End, off-Broadway hit The Jonathan Larson Project brings some of his lesser-known, and never-performed, songs to the stage in this pulsating and intimate piece of concert theatre.
Directed by John Simpkins, The Jonathan Larson Project blends the theatricality of a musical with the intimacy of a concert performance. Using just five performers (Max Harwood, Imelda Warren-Green, Marcus Collins, Natalie Kassanga, Michael Mather), the production traverses Larson’s back catalogue, with numbers dipping in and out of shows they were cut from, such as tick, tick… BOOM! and Rent, to pieces from Larson’s overtly political cabaret, Prostate of the Union, penned and performed while the writer was a student. These numbers are combined in this 90-minute piece with Larson’s foray into writing pop songs (‘Pura Vida’, ‘Out of My Dreams’) as well as standalone theatre numbers, such as the beautifully poignant ‘Piano’ and the jaunty ‘Casual Sex, Pizza and Beer’.
Under Simpkins’ direction, as well as Livi van Warmelo’s music direction, the piece attempts, with large success, to weave these homeless songs into a somewhat cohesive piece. While the production does, deliberately, lack a clear narrative, the centring of it within a New York apartment mirrors Larson’s own writing experiences, with numbers somewhat grouped thematically in a manner that helps to drive home their message, or bounce the momentum along a bit. The inclusion of home footage of Larson is a neat touch, and a nod to the looming presence and weight of the writer’s success that permeates the piece.
Musically, it is a show boosted by the stunning skillset of its lead quintet. Max Harwood’s gentle, and at times, vulnerable, musicality soars particularly in the determined ‘One of These Days’, cut from musical Superbia, while Michael Mather cuts a brooding figure in ‘SOS’, taken from the intriguing prospect of a 1984 musical which never got off the ground for Larson, instead being a precursor to Superbia.
Moreover, Marcus Collins is terrific fun in the upbeat, cheeky, theatre song ‘Casual Sex, Pizza and Beer’, a number full of energy and vitality as the five sway and chorus in a manner which draws audiences in, but also reminds us that Larson, despite some of his more gloomy political work, can write something uplifting and energetic too. This is also seen in Imelda Warren-Green’s terrific rendition of ‘Hosing the Furniture’, a bizarre number about a struggling and increasingly crazed housewife desperate to keep on top of her collapsing home, written by Larson that won him the Stephen Sondheim Award as part of a songwriting competition that celebrated the 50th anniversary of the 1939 World’s Fair. This particular piece, absurd and chaotic in nature, is delivered with frantic urgency by a terrific Warren-Green, who excels in drawing out its comedic merit.
Warren-Green and Natalie Kassanga combine neatly too for the furiously catchy ‘White Male World’, taken from a cabaret Skirting the Issues, while Kassanga is also on fine form in ‘Love Heals’, reiterating Larson’s ability, in this number, to transcend genres.
That said, however, while the performers are superb, the production does lose a bit of momentum under the weight of moving so relentlessly from genre to genre, and theme to theme, regardless of its attempts to try and categorise these. While most numbers are only somewhat staged, relying on smaller props and subtle costume changes to contextualise, two numbers feel too long and outlandish, such as the goofy ‘The Vision Thing’, which skewers the manufacturing of American political candidates, but unfortunately just drags, not aided by a bizarre choice of animated projections which undermine the classy nature of much of the rest of the show. This is also coupled with ‘Iron Mike’, a furious piece for an Earth Day benefit, written in response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Like ‘The Vision Thing’, ‘Iron Mike’ has some interesting tonality but feels out of place here, and indeed the production feels much more vibrant and engaging when the numbers are taken from Larson’s musical mind rather than the primarily angry political pieces, and one wonders whether this show could have been, like Larson, a little more ruthless with the cuts.
Nevertheless, The Jonathan Larson Project goes beyond a simple concert or revue of the late writer’s work. There has been great effort here to explore the numbers that could have been just as familiar as those from tick, tick… BOOM! and Rent, and which could have been lost to time if it had not been for this show. Bolstered by the talent of the quintet, The Jonathan Larson Project breathes new life into Larson’s back catalogue and is a fitting reminder of the writer’s extreme and devastatingly cut-short talent.
