‘Tick, Tick…Boom!’ gets lost in the crowd

Restless staging overwhelms some of the anxiety and tenderness at the heart of Jonathan Larson’s musical.

Sheets of music hang overhead when the audience enters Tick, Tick…Boom! at The Arts Hub. It is a striking visual representation of Jon’s central problem: his work has encroached on nearly every aspect of his life.

The aspiring composer is approaching 30 with little success to show for years of sacrifice. His musical consumes his attention while his girlfriend, Susan, wonders whether their relationship has a future and his best friend, Michael, has traded artistic ambitions for financial security. Jon may recognize what his obsession is costing him, but he cannot bring himself to let it go.

The irony is that a production about Jon’s inability to make room for anything beyond his work rarely makes enough room for Jon himself.

Director Lexie Lazear and choreographer Kenzie Rosen-Stone repeatedly surround Jon’s private panic with a seven-person ensemble performing broad reactions, literal gestures and flash-mob-like combinations. The approach creates plenty to watch. Too often, it leaves too little room to feel.

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That tension defines The Arts Hub and Shifted Lens Theatre Company’s co-production, which enlarges a story that benefits from compression.

Larson’s material asks whether artistic obsession is worth the sacrifices it extracts from relationships, financial stability and ordinary life. Lazear’s staging instead keeps pushing outward, turning interior songs into group events until their emotional stakes flatten.

The ensemble of Tick, Tick…Boom! at The Arts Hub. | Photo: Jake Barber / @jakebarberphoto

When more becomes less

The production announces its maximalism immediately in “30/90,” Jon’s anxious opening confession about turning 30 without achieving the artistic success he imagined for himself. Rather than allowing that panic to remain centered on Jon, Lazear and Rosen-Stone surround him with an ensemble performing broad comic reactions and literalized movement.

“Green Green Dress” and “Johnny Can’t Decide” make the problem even clearer. Both are built around private, interior moments, yet here they expand into group numbers. During “Green Green Dress,” ensemble choreography spreads across the front of the stage, pulling focus from the charged encounter between Jon and Susan. “Johnny Can’t Decide,” meanwhile, layers interpretive movement over Jon’s uncertainty until the choreography begins explaining emotions the song already communicates.

Rosen-Stone’s vocabulary fares much better when Larson gives it somewhere to go. “Sunday,” set during a frantic restaurant shift, benefits from bodies ricocheting around the stage, as does “No More,” which uses the ensemble to physically demonstrate the horrors of living in a New York City apartment. Those numbers prove that a larger ensemble can enliven this normally compact show. The problem is one of restraint: not every thought needs to materialize as movement.

The physical production has appealing touches. The suspended sheet music creates a striking canopy, while music director Orin Gotchey’s live band, perched on an elevated platform, keeps the score present as a force in Jon’s life. Mo Schultz’s lighting helps shift the room between memory, performance and reality without slowing the 85-minute production.

The cast of Tick, Tick…Boom! at The Arts Hub. | Photo: Jake Barber / @jakebarberphoto

Stronger in the quieter moments

Christian Semmler captures Jon’s restless, self-absorbed anxiety most persuasively in the book scenes. He is eager, twitchy and frequently somewhere else even when Susan is asking him to be present. Vocally, however, the demanding role exposes inconsistency. Sustained notes wander in pitch, and Semmler struggles with several passages in Jon’s high tenor register, including “30/90” and “Louder Than Words.”

Brekken Baker offers the evening’s most grounded work as Susan. She underplays against the surrounding theatricality, giving real weight to a woman tired of competing with a musical for her partner’s attention. Her warm, assured vocals add tenderness to Susan’s frustration. Even the peculiar puppet conceit imposed on “Therapy” cannot erase the specificity of her anger or the affection that still binds Susan to Jon.

Malea Kinnison brings a different charge as Karessa, an actor in Jon’s musical. Kinnison pairs an impressive voice with a high-energy comic presence in “Sugar,” then joins Baker for one of the production’s smartest staging choices. During “Come to Your Senses,” Kinnison sings from the raised platform beside the band while Baker, as Susan, remains downstage near the audience. The separation allows Karessa’s performance and Susan’s emotional reality to coexist, and the two women’s powerful vocals make the song’s double meaning crystal clear without overexplaining it.

Brekken Baker and Malea Kinnison in Tick, Tick…Boom! | Photo: Jake Barber / @jakebarberphoto

Jozeph Mykaels is similarly effective as Michael, balancing easy humor with a quieter sense that he is carrying information Jon has failed to notice. Mykaels brings buoyant comic energy and strong vocals to “No More,” gleefully showing off his new apartment to Jon. Later, “Real Life” reveals the depth underneath that charm. When Michael finally reveals what Jon has missed, Mykaels lets the moment land without forcing it.

There is a thoughtful impulse behind this production: expand Larson’s three-person chamber piece into something communal, kinetic and unapologetically theatrical. In flashes, that idea works. But for much of the evening, the production’s actions speak louder than Larson’s words.