Doug Knight

Maybe you’ve just found yourself at someone else’s work party where you don’t get the banter, and the jokes are a little too ‘in’, or maybe you’re sitting in a theatre Packed to the Rafters with a whole heap of other people who have no idea either – it's not your fault.   Until the 2021 Netflix version, awareness of Tick, Tick… Boom! was probably limited to diehard musical theatre fans, or for the less hardcore, maybe it was there in the shadows of Spotify alongside Rent – a musical you probably have heard of. Rent is, of course, the show that cemented its creator, Jonathan Larson, in Broadway history. Given he tragically died the night before its off-Broadway premiere at only 35, Larson was never as celebrated in life as he was after his death. Rent would go on to enjoy a full and long-running Broadway production season, earning Larson a multitude of posthumous awards, including a Tony for Best Musical.  And so, with a little more context and the fact that Larson originally penned Tick, Tick… Boom! as a semi-autobiographical ‘rock monologue’ for himself, it’s not a stretch to grasp that this work serves – or has been fashioned to serve – as a prescient and prophetic insight into the creation of his legacy and Rent - a modern take on the 1896 opera La Bohème.The year is 1990, and Jon, a talented but struggling musical theatre creative, contemplates the future as he approaches his 30th birthday while still pursuing the bright lights of Broadway. Reconstructed after Larson’s de