By Giselle P. Kasilag
Theater Reviewtick…tick…Boom!By Jonathan LarsonDirected by Robbie GuevarraPresented by 9 Works Theatrical
ABOUT to turn 30, musician/composer Jon finds himself in a panic. Once named as a promising young composer, he is on the verge of leaving his youth behind without realizing any of its promise. The last five years have been spent waiting on tables at a diner while trying to finish his musical that appears to be going nowhere.
It didn’t help that his best friend, Mike, just bought a BMW and is in the process of moving out of the tiny apartment that they share. He is moving into a luxury residence courtesy of his earnings as a successful marketing executive. But the financial stability came with a steep price tag. Mike gave up his dream of becoming an actor.
His girlfriend, Susan, is a dancer who makes a living teaching ballet to children. She is wondering if it’s time to leave the hard life of New York and move somewhere else and start a family.
As Jon wonders about his life choices, he is constantly hearing the ticking of a clock that seems to foreshadow an explosive boom.
Thus opened the press preview of 9 Works Theatrical’s current staging of Jonathan Larson’s tick…tick…Boom! It’s first production since the global lockdowns, managing director Santi Santamaria’s directive was to start small. But director Robbie Guevarra appeared to have a different definition of “small.” The curtain rose to reveal a replica of a typical New York apartment. It was a hardworking set that had a few surprises up its sleeves.
Jef Flores is Jon, Reb Atadero is Mike, and Tanya Manalang is Susan. All three were handpicked by Mr. Guevarra for their respective roles and each one delivered a performance as explosive as the title of the musical implied.
From the moment the show began, Mr. Flores owned the stage. The material used him as a narrator while making him interact with the other characters at the same time. The constant shifting would have been daunting to a lesser actor, but his approach allowed the audience to feel like they’d entered his brain and were experiencing the stress and panic with him.
And there was a lot of that. The entire plot is driven by the anxiety of a timeline imposed by society and reinforced by the hunger to achieve personal greatness. It would have been easy to turn Jon into a caricature, fully laden with every struggling artist trope and cliché known to man. Instead, Mr. Flores gently turned him into a character we are all familiar with. The mumbling, the stumbling, the doubt, the freaking out, and the weak attempt at adulting — Jon is all of us questioning our decisions to follow our passions and wondering if it’s time to move on and get a “real” job. That he performed it for a predominantly creative audience which included theater legend Audie Gemora and prima ballerina Lisa Macuja-Elizalde — both of whom have had their own Jon moments in their careers — could not have been easy.
While it was natural to feel sympathy for Jon, Mike and Susan represented the harsh realities of the stories of our lives, with Mike choosing financial stability while Susan looked at the simple life. They were the unfulfilled potential and broken dreams that we would rather not face. Humanizing them was difficult but Mr. Atadero and Ms. Manalang were up to the task. They approached their characters from a position of compassion. They did not ask to be pitied for supposedly giving up on their passion. They made choices based on their circumstances.
It was noticeable that chemistry was missing between Mr. Flores and Ms. Manalang which may have worked to their advantage. After all, the couple was on the verge of breaking up when the story began, and their characters have admitted to growing apart. Unfortunately, it did not help that the chemistry was intense between Ms. Manalang and Mr. Atadero. A couple in real life, it translated so well on stage that there were moments when it felt like Mike and Susan might end up together.
Apart from being the girlfriend and the best friend, the pair also performed a range of characters including Jon’s parents and agents, Mike’s boss, and customers at the diner. It is in the portrayal of these seemingly minor characters that their stage experience was most evident. Digging deep into their theatrical war chest, they created distinct personalities for each one.
Ms. Manalang seized her moment with her rendition of “Come To Your Senses.” The song is one of the few true earworms in the musical whose soundtrack is not always easy to sing along with. There was an honesty to the performance that made the audience feel vulnerable along with her.
Mr. Flores was undeniably the star of the show, but the night clearly belonged to Mr. Atadero. The role — not just Mike but all the characters that followed — felt like it was written for him. He was clearly in his element, effortlessly shifting from one personality to the next without missing a beat. It was like he was channeling Robin Williams as the genie in Aladdin. It takes a gifted actor to take on a supporting role and make it shine. But it takes a special kind of human being to do so without upstaging his co-actors. There was a generosity to his acting that truly highlights the best of theater as a shared artform.
If there is one word that can be used to describe the entire production of tick…tick…Boom!, it would be maturity. There is a new depth in the direction and performance, and the shared trauma of the pandemic was thoughtfully utilized to draw out emotions long held back for the sake of staying strong. There may be differences in certain artistic decisions, but the audience was in agreement that the performance was powerful and exactly what was needed as we navigate the new normal.