'The Jonathan Larson Project' review — a glorious tribute to a blazing musical theatre talent

Read our review of The Jonathan Larson Project, featuring Natalie Kassanga and Imelda Warren-Green, now in performances at Southwark Playhouse to 22 August.

Summary

• The Jonathan Larson Project comes to Southwark Playhouse
• The show pays tribute to the late composer of shows like RENT
• Natalie Kassanga and Imelda Warren-Green particularly impress with their performances of Larson songs

Thirty years ago, Jonathan Larson died unexpectedly at the age of 35 from an undiagnosed aortic dissection, just hours before his musical RENT – inspired by Puccini’s La Bohème – was due to have its first Off-Broadway performance. Standing on the brink of the success that would posthumously earn him the Pulitzer Prize and worldwide acclaim, Larson never witnessed the cultural phenomenon his work would become. RENT transferred to Broadway, where it won multiple Tony Awards, ran for 12 years and, when it closed, was the seventh longest-running show in Broadway history. It’s soon returning to the West End for a major anniversary revival.

Larson’s death remains one of musical theatre’s greatest losses and the question of what he might have created next will forever hang in the air.

The Jonathan Larson Project offers the closest thing yet to an answer. Created by theatre historian Jennifer Ashley Tepper, the revue brings together songs from Larson’s personal archive, many written long before RENT and some never publicly performed until it premiered Off-Broadway. With the numbers largely removed from their original contexts, the music flows with only minimal interruption – each song is accompanied by just a single line of background projected onto the back wall of the stage.

“Not a word has been changed,” we’re told in the show’s opening moments. This is Larson’s budding, exploratory talent laid bare. There are pop songs, numbers that were eventually cut from Tick, Tick… BOOM! and RENT, and others from musicals that were never produced. Are they all feats of musical genius? Not quite. But The Jonathan Larson Project captures a creative mind in constant motion. Even a composer as gifted as Larson produced a few duds along the way.

Yet there are genuine treasures here. “Valentine’s Day” paints a portrait of a man trapped in a cycle of love and heartbreak. “Hosing the Furniture” – performed with exhilarating mania by Imelda Warren-Green – won Larson the Stephen Sondheim Award and depicts a housewife teetering on the edge of collapse. The closing number, “Piano”, features Larson’s own voice, singing of the healing power of the instrument that shaped his life.

Performed by a cast of five in a setting that initially evokes an East Village bar, the actors take turns stepping into the spotlight. Natalie Kassanga has a voice like silk, soaring through the show-stopping “Love Heals”, while Nate Bertone’s design nods to Michael Greif’s original Broadway aesthetic for RENT.

Many of the songs touch on a sense of yearning. But nostalgia is the prevailing mood in John Simpkins’ production. Larson’s music – although at times achingly beautiful – feels rooted in a different era. There are photos from Larson’s youth here, too.

We see footage of RENT in rehearsal, its journey from a small Off-Broadway production to choirs and theatres across the globe, and even Lin-Manuel Miranda reflecting on Larson as one of his greatest creative inspirations. But as the revue moves forward, the music is left to speak for itself. Here, Larson is presented in fragments, and while we might not get a complete picture of his musicals or of the man himself, his glorious, scrappy songs are more than enough to feed our souls.

The Jonathan Larson Project is at Southwark Playhouse to 22 August. Book The Jonathan Larson Project tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: The Jonathan Larson Project (Photos by Danny Kaan)