Neandertal (2006)

Have you ever felt nostalgia for a life you haven’t lived? For any aspiring artist, Tick, Tick… BOOM! might do that. Like disconnected shards of a half-remembered dream on a Sunday afternoon in July. An honest look at the anxiety that preys on the mind of a man turning thirty, with nothing to show for his time on this Earth during his ‘golden years’, it’s also a much-coveted look into the mind of the man who revolutionized Broadway as we know it. With some observational commentary on the AIDS epidemic and the genocide against the LGBT community in the 1990s, it’s a rock musical, a little all-over-the-place, but is extremely endearing for any fan of the musical genre.

For those unaware, Tick, Tick… BOOM! is the unfinished semi-autobiographical musical written by Jonathan Larson about his inability to become the next Stephen Sondheim, although some would say he did, even if it’s after his death. Lin-Manuel Miranda first saw the musical Tick, Tick… Boom! in 2001, and that story personally inspired him. The musical is about the week leading to Larson’s 30

birthday, during which he staged his first-ever workshop, for a dystopian rock musical he had been working on for the last eight years, and how he wrote the song which Sondheim himself had asked him to. Larson wrote this after the mentioned rock musical, but it wasn’t until 2001 that it was first performed.