Review by Clara
Tickets were gifted in return for an honest review
Five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes
How do you measure the life of a woman or a man?
How do you measure the life of a woman or a man?
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| Photo by Danny Kaan |
“Seasons of Love”, from Jonathan Larson’s musical Rent, is his most well-known song. Originally a show tune, it has transcended musical theatre to become a mainstream pop song, resulting in club remixes, a cover on the television show Glee, a reference in the US version of The Office, and even a political parody.
The musical has also been immortalised in a 2005 film adaptation which featured some of the performers from its original Broadway production in 1996. There have been about a dozen major productions of Rent, including five major productions in the UK. In September 2026, for Rent’s 30th anniversary, it is scheduled to return to London’s West End.
Larson did not live to see Rent become the success that it is. Neither did he get to celebrate Rent’s four Tony Awards and Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
This year is not only Rent’s 30th anniversary, it is also Larson’s 30th death anniversary. He died unexpectedly of a heart condition the same day that Rent was scheduled for its first Off-Broadway preview.
If Larson were still alive, we might have been able to enjoy much more of his work, and would have seen his evolution as a creator and composer over the decades.
The UK premiere of The Jonathan Larson Project at Southwark Playhouse Borough allows audiences to experience some of Larson’s evolution from his pre-Rent years. There is a sense that the production is keen to present Larson authentically: the programme proclaims “Music and Lyrics by Jonathan Larson. Not a word has been changed.”
Rent was arguably Larson’s most mature work, but his earlier pieces as performed in The Jonathan Larson Project both unveil faint blueprints for Rent and reveal fragments of a creative life cut short. The 18 songs performed over 90 minutes span more than a decade of Larson’s life. The earliest song featured, “Casual Sex, Pizza, and Beer” (lyrics by Ralph Scarpato), is from 1981, when Larson was about 21. The most recent song featured, “Love Heals”, is from 1992 and was commissioned for an AIDS education foundation which commemorated one of Larson’s friends.
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| Photo by Danny Kaan. |
Though those two song titles demonstrate a strong contrast, perhaps the most offbeat and memorable song was “Hosing the Furniture” from 1989, a satirical imagining of a possible future that was prompted by the 50th anniversary of the 1939 World’s Fair. The world that the song’s protagonist inhabits is quite alien to us, but the frenetic pace of the song captures the anxiety of modern living.
Both “Hosing the Furniture” and Rent’s “Over The Moon” (featuring no less than five instances of moo-ing) have fantastical elements that take a minute to get used to, before the audience can see past that to the underlying message. “White Male World” and “The Truth is a Lie” are politically-charged list songs that are reminiscent of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, and find echoes in Rent’s “La Vie Bohème”.
“Out of My Dreams” and “Pura Vida”, which we are told were envisioned as pop songs, contain more plot than most songs on the radio. It is bittersweet irony that it was “Seasons of Love”, written for musical theatre, which eventually allowed Larson to break through to mainstream radio.
Structurally, The Jonathan Larson Project does not have a narrative — it is a concert that feels like an extended music video. There is the occasional video clip providing context about Larson and his work. The middle section felt unrelentingly heavy at times, which began to lighten up with “SOS”, inspired by George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.
One redeeming quality of the production is the casting of vocal powerhouses such as Natalie Kassanga. Imelda Warren-Green is also one to watch — she brought stage presence and charisma, particularly in the moments when she was the focus of attention.
What can we learn about Larson based on The Jonathan Larson Project? His early portfolio is a time capsule of his hopes and fears, and is full of understandable personal and political angst, as well as vulnerability. His quest for justice, given expression through his songs about the HIV/AIDS crisis and the environment, is a throughline that enabled him to imbue Rent with authenticity, and enabled Rent to make a far-reaching impact. Due to the times he was living in, some of his songs can feel uncannily prophetic when they reflect on mortality. He contained multitudes. And he is beloved by those who made this production possible.
In one of the most poignant songs in the production, “Piano”, we heard a recording of Larson singing that piano had saved his soul. The following lines from that song are fitting to describe Larson’s legacy:
Somehow I’d get to you in time
Somehow I’d get through to you in time
What Larson created in the time he had (to borrow his words from “What You Own” from Rent) is “connection in an isolating age”.
⭐⭐⭐
‘The Jonathan Larson Project’ runs at Southwark Playhouse Borough in London until Saturday, 22 August 2026. Tickets are available from: https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/the-jonathan-larson-project/
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| Photo by Danny Kaan. |
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