“The Jonathan Larson Project” at the Orpheum Theatre (Photo: Joan Marcus)
The tragedy of Jonathan Larson’s sudden death at the age of 35 looms large over his two produced musicals, the smash hit Rent and the posthumously rejiggered tick, tick…BOOM!. Both shows are about the intangibility of time, about making the most of your days while you have them. Larson’s abrupt ending casts an eerie, prescient shadow on those themes and it’s in that darkness that his legacy lies. As much hope as he pours into Rent, his death is inextricably bound to it.
The new song cycle The Jonathan Larson Project begins with projected footage of Larson’s life, then his death, then the enduring power of his work, particularly the song “Seasons of Love.” Conceiver Jennifer Ashley Tepper and director John Simpkins get that out of the way right at the top. It then rewinds, in a sense, to Jonathan’s life before Rent and to his early writing. Tepper has sifted through Larson’s archive and found about twenty songs, some unproduced, some only heard in public once before. It’s not a revue of his greatest hits, it’s a kaleidoscope of his unheard material.
Mostly songs written in his twenties, they’re suffused with youthfulness. There’s a go-for-broke quality to most of them. If Rent can feel a little pompous in its brashness, these songs have a lack of pretentiousness that extends their quirks some grace. The opening number “Greene Street” has the charming spirit of an “I ❤️ NY” shirt. Larson wrote it at the age of 23, newly arrived in New York and ecstatic to be here. The Jonathan Larson Project lets him sing the first few lines himself via an archival recording. Its rosy-eyed view of a SoHo morning recenters the listener away from Jonathan’s end and toward his beginning.
Some of the songs have the Larsonian sound we associate with Rent and tick, tick…BOOM! and may have been reworked into those other projects. “Casual Sex, Pizza and Beer” and “White Male World” are both reminiscent of movements from Rent’s Act I finale “La Vie Boheme.” “Valentine’s Day” appeared in an earlier version of Rent, but its accompaniment strongly recalls “Johnny Can’t Decide” from tick, tick…BOOM!. Composers write countless songs for musicals that don’t make it to the first performance and even more themes, motifs, and ideas pile up in the process. These tunes give a glimpse into Larson’s process and show how things stuck with him over time.
“Valentine’s Day” jumps out as a canonical Larson song. Perhaps it’s the auditory association with “Johnny Can’t Decide”, but as soon as it begins it feels recognizably Larson. In a sensitive and deeply intense performance from Andy Mientus (and his jaw-dropping haircut), the song depicts an abusive relationship and the victim’s hopelessness to escape his trauma. On the 2019 recording of The Jonathan Larson Project from its original concert staging at 54 Below, Mientus uses she/her pronouns to describe the song’s central figure as if he is describing someone he knows. Here, tweaking the lyric slightly, the song contains much more power as he describes his own experience and his own despair.
Jason Tam jumps into the racing current of Larson’s melody in “Pura Vida”, a standalone pop song. Tam brings a soulful openness to the song and it has the inspiring, uniting effect of some of Larson’s best writing. Lauren Marcus makes a tasting menu of “Hosing the Furniture”, a song about a mother’s nervous breakdown preparing the house for her husband to come home. The song is a lot, and not what I would describe as my favorite of the evening, but it’s Everest for a singing actor and Marcus climbs it all the way to the top.
Adam Chanler-Berat, formerly an excellent Mark in Rent, has his own challenging song to convey. “Rhapsody” has more in common with a monologue than with the other pop-rock songs in the show. Larson musicalizes a walk around the city as the singer thinks about money, his job, his relationship, and music. It takes quite an actor to make it work and Chanler-Berat is up for the task. He visualizes the world of Larson’s lyrics so fully that it then becomes real for the audience, too. The song is plainspoken and straightforward and there isn’t anything resembling vocal pyrotechnics. Instead, it all hangs on Chanler-Berat’s incredible ability to bring out the worry, the stress, and the longing in Larson’s writing.
The shattering vocals department is left to Taylor Iman Jones. “Love Heals” is the only song I was familiar with before The Jonathan Larson Project’s album was released. It was tacked onto the end credits of the regrettable 2005 film adaptation of Rent and appears as a bonus on the soundtrack. Here, Jones tears into it and brings the song’s titular message thundering through the audience. Simpkins and choreographer Byron Easley stage the number similarly to the iconic “Seasons of Love” downstage line in Rent’s original production and that callback brings the show hurtling forward in time up to Larson’s ultimate success and untimely death.
The cast turn fully upstage from that line and watch projected photos of Larson as, once again, we hear his actual voice, this time singing a love song to his piano. The Jonathan Larson Project brings him back to life for ninety minutes and then sends us out into the East Village night feeling his loss all over again.