Tick, Tick…BOOM!
Oct. 8th, 2015 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThe Wilsor Theatrical Group, the new theater company that’s taken up residence at the Barrow Mansion, put up Jonathan Larson’s Tick, Tick…BOOM! last weekend, and circumstances allowed for us to actually go see it.
The show is about Larson’s life while he was writing RENT, and after his death his friends dug through his notes and pulled together the second show from them. I happen to be very fond of it, though some of the poignancy has faded as I passed out of my 20s and became a father and homeowner. (I listened to it A LOT leading up to my 30th birthday.)
As the inaugural show of a new company, starring and directed by that company’s founders, it deserves a bit of slack. Overall, they did a very nice job: They clearly had a lot of fun with it, and most of the funny bits and poignant moments worked. They’re got good voices (even in the kinda lousy acoustics of the Barrow Mansion) and decent stage presence. They staging could have used a little work, as it was a weird sort of “intime” that was not quite in-the-round and not quite proscenium (“Theater in the Triangle”), which meant that half the seats in the house were lousy for at least part of the staging. I suspect that will improve as they get used to the space.
Also, Dustin Wilsor as Jon had a couple of songs where he was more reciting lyrics (and being late with pick-ups) than actually acting them. This wasn’t a constant thing; it was actually most evident in “30/90” and got better from there. But it irritated me.
(I’d also like to take this moment to note that the Wilsors are an amusingly non-stereotypical gay couple, as one of them has terrible hair and the other is a terrible dresser. For their next show, apparently they need someone more stereotypical to do costumes.)
Overall: I’m not terribly interested in the shows they have planned for the rest of the season, but that’s the selection of shows, not the company. If they put up something else that appealed to me, I’d totally try to check it out.
The show is about Larson’s life while he was writing RENT, and after his death his friends dug through his notes and pulled together the second show from them. I happen to be very fond of it, though some of the poignancy has faded as I passed out of my 20s and became a father and homeowner. (I listened to it A LOT leading up to my 30th birthday.)
As the inaugural show of a new company, starring and directed by that company’s founders, it deserves a bit of slack. Overall, they did a very nice job: They clearly had a lot of fun with it, and most of the funny bits and poignant moments worked. They’re got good voices (even in the kinda lousy acoustics of the Barrow Mansion) and decent stage presence. They staging could have used a little work, as it was a weird sort of “intime” that was not quite in-the-round and not quite proscenium (“Theater in the Triangle”), which meant that half the seats in the house were lousy for at least part of the staging. I suspect that will improve as they get used to the space.
Also, Dustin Wilsor as Jon had a couple of songs where he was more reciting lyrics (and being late with pick-ups) than actually acting them. This wasn’t a constant thing; it was actually most evident in “30/90” and got better from there. But it irritated me.
(I’d also like to take this moment to note that the Wilsors are an amusingly non-stereotypical gay couple, as one of them has terrible hair and the other is a terrible dresser. For their next show, apparently they need someone more stereotypical to do costumes.)
Overall: I’m not terribly interested in the shows they have planned for the rest of the season, but that’s the selection of shows, not the company. If they put up something else that appealed to me, I’d totally try to check it out.
