Louis Colaiocovo stars in MusicalFare's "tick, tick...BOOM!"

Rent’s bohemian characters sing Jonathan Larson’s anthem “Seasons of Love” and tally 525,600 joyful minutes in every year.

Jon, the character Larson based upon himself in tick, tick…BOOM!, focuses on the agonizing minute when, each year, friends haul out the cake. He sings, “They’re singing, ‘Happy Birthday’/You just wish you could run away/Who cares about a birthday?”

What a difference a year makes. Larson died in 1996 at the age of 35, three months before the Broadway opening of Rent.

Balance within the two extremes expressed by Larson—sincerity somewhere between the anxious dread of his life and the heart-on-sleeve happiness of his characters—might be the key to success in performing tick, tick…BOOM! A week away from opening MusicalFare’s upcoming production, Louis Colaiacovo seems to be on the path toward that balance, in the role and in his life.

Raúl Esparza, who starred in the original 2001 production, was challenged to create a character recognizable as the guy loved by New York City’s theater community and who mourned his early death. Colaiacovo wants to revive Jon, given iconic shape by Esparza, as a human, a friend Buffalo audiences have not yet met.

tick, tick…BOOM! began as sketch material created by Larson. Performing solo in cabarets and workshops during the late 1980s, Larson sang and joked about professional and personal insecurities. He saw love passing him by and his friends making fortunes while he, literally, was singing for his supper. As young people have felt for centuries, Larson believed his world would end at age 30 and he imposed that age as his deadline success.

The big three-o is still on the horizon, but it looms large for Colaiacovo. Right out of college, he spent the first half of his twenties touring the country and appeared in three different musicals, bus and truck tours of 1776, Footloose and Titanic. Not a bad way to start a career.

“I got to see every state in the country,” he boasts, “and there were so many young people in Footloose and Titanic, it was just like an extension of college.”

The downside was touring itself, and he cites the rigors of doing 13 one-night gigs in a row.

“It got to be that whenever I got on a plane to fly from New York to Buffalo, I would get happy and excited,” he says. “I also noticed that whenever I got on a plane to fly from Buffalo back to New York, I could feel my muscles starting to tense.”

After almost five years touring, Colaiacovo was visiting actor Marc Sacco in his Buffalo apartment. Surrounded by friends, Colaiacovo was starting to feel those back-to-the-grind pangs. He instantly decided to move back to Buffalo and announced it to the room. Cheers. Hugs. Welcomes. And no regrets.

Confident that he could relocate his performance career to Buffalo, what concerned Colaiacovo is what Convention and Visitors Bureau recruiters call “quality of life attractions.” But he has found time to return to school to earn two master’s degrees and is surrounded by loved ones.

Colaiacovo is thrilled that his co-stars in tick, tick…BOOM! are two of his best friends, Sacco and Michele Marie Roberts. They have worked together in other shows, both professionally and at Niagara University, where they graduated within two years of each other. Sacco will play Jon’s best friend, Roberts Jon’s fiancé, and between them a plethora of quick-change characters in a rapid succession of scenes.

“Familiar with each other,” Colaiacovo points out, “we’re not afraid to try things in the rehearsal process that might make us look stupid. Whatever doesn’t work, we just go back and try it again.”

Rehearsing in comfort as he tries on a new range of characteristics is a luxury Colaiacovo would not find working on a touring production. He describes Jon’s as a “caffeinated” personality. As he brings up the edge in his scenes, Colaiacovo is trying to soften the edge in his songs. Colaiacovo credits Esparza for singing the Larson songs with rock-star intensity. However, with the help of musical director Michael Hake, Colaiacovo is finding a more audience-directed, less self-focused approach to the music.

Jonathan Larson’s legacy is an imbalanced picture. He will forever be known for batting a thousand: One time up at plate and he knocked Rent out of the stadium. We only know him as a success.

In some ways, tick, tick…BOOM! is a play not so much about Larson but about becoming him and finding the statement he would make in Rent. Where many would stress the man’s desire to create a great show, Colaiacovo is emphasizing the artist’s right to have a fulfilling life. And setting an example of it himself.

tick, tick…BOOM!, a musical produced and presented by MusicalFare Theater Company, runs February 28 through April 1 at Daemen College, 4380 Main Street in Amherst. Call 839-8540 or email musicalfare@daemen.edu for ticket information.