This may be my final hour
This may be the dying day
And though they never taught me why in school,
I think I’m learning how to pray

Jonathan Larson wrote this song, entitled “SOS,” when he was 22 years old, a full thirteen years before he died suddenly at age 35 on the eve of the debut of his musical “Rent,” which became one of the most successful and influential musicals in Broadway history.  It is the earliest of his 20 songs in “The Jonathan Larson Project,” a musical revue that’s opening tonight at the Orpheum.

“SOS,” sweet and haunting, but punctuated by a catchy pop refrain, was the final song in Larson’s first full-length musical, which was entitled “1984” and intended as an adaptation of George Orwell’s novel; the protagonist, Winston Smith, is singing about his pending doom.  But Larson couldn’t get the rights to Orwell’s novel, so the musical was never publicly presented and SOS never performed publicly during his lifetime. The difficulties Larson had with “1984” prompted him to write his own dystopian story, “Superbia” – and the difficulties he had mounting that musical in turn helped inspire him to write “tick…tick…BOOM”

The background of “SOS” is not explained as part of the stage show, which features five talented, well-known young Broadway veterans and a live band performing one vividly staged musical number after another out of chronological order and without any patter in-between the songs. Rather, the context for “SOS” and all the other songs is written out on a page inserted into the playbill. To me, this page was essential; it’s the context of Larson’s songs that makes the evening feel especially worthwhile.

“The Jonathan Larson Project” begins with a quick video montage of  “Seasons of Love” as performed in varied productions of “Rent” around the world. That’s the song that measures a year in minutes, and then in laughter and strife, and finally in love.  “Seasons of Love” gutted me when I first heard it many years ago, and it gets to me still.  If the behind-the-scenes story of “Rent” is so dramatic that it keeps on being told anew three decades later (such as in Theater Kid, the newly published memoir by Rent producer Jeffrey Seller), the musical itself remains a staple in theaters throughout the world (currently in Argentina, Mexico, Canada Massachusetts and Nebraska.) It should not be a surprise that none of the unfamiliar songs in the new revue, which Larson wrote over the dozen years before “Rent, ” are as instantaneous and powerful a draw as the songs we know. How could they be? It’s rare that a composer gets even one song – much less an entire musical – that become such an indelible part of the culture.

But it seems clear that the existence of “The Jonathan Larson Project” is itself a measure of love, an impressive exercise in excavation and dramaturgy, painstakingly culled from Larson’s archives at the Library of Congress by Jennifer  Ashley Tepper, programming director for 54 Below. Tepper began more than a decade ago putting together the unknown songs of Jonathan Larson, which led to a concert in 2018 and an album in 2019. If the result doesn’t add up to a coherent new work of American musical theater, the songs often suggest a distinctive sound and sensibility.

The first live song in the revue, “Greene Street,” was written when Larson first moved to the city in 1983. Sung by the entire ensemble, it has the jaunty, revved-up sense of discovery and celebration of urban life that would find later expression in “Rent.”  Several songs, like “SOS,” were part of larger projects that ran briefly or not at all. Lauren Marcus sings “Break Out the Booze,” a sexy blues that was part of a group cabaret show, taking place on the last night of Prohibition. 

Larson originally wrote “Valentine’s Day” for the 1987 musical “Prostate of the Union: The Evils of Ronald Reagan’s America” which had a one-day run (on Valentine’s Day) at his alma mater Adelphi. It’s sung by a naïve teenager, portrayed by Andy Mientus, who is drawn into a sado-masochistic relationship; it includes the refrain: 

Beat me
til i‘m black and blue and gray
Draw a little heart
Draw a little arrow
Draw a little blood
V v v valentine’s day

We’re told that Larson liked the song so much that he initially included it in “Rent,” but it was cut before the 1994 workshop. It did reportedly help Larson come up with the structure of “Rent” beginning and ending at Christmas and going holiday to holiday.

“Find the Key” was similarly cut from “tick…tick…BOOM.” They lyrics offer an extended pun; Andy MIentus as stand-in from Larson is trying to write a song and at the same time trying to figure out if he can salvage his failing relationship:

He’s at the bridge
Between his head,
Which says,
“it’s dead”
And his heart which says,
“don’t let her get away”

“The Jonathan Larsons Project” features a quartet of political songs that haven’t aged as well lyrically as some of his other work

“The Vision Thing” is a bouncy satirical number about the making of a political campaign for a Republican woman candidate – in which the consultant wants the candidate to act like “a centerfold candidacy”…show a little cleavage. “Iron Mike” is a ballad about the Exxon Valdez oil spill, “White Male World” is primarily a list song that, in one verse, works in Spandex, Rebok, Stairmaster and Oprah Winfrey, and in another, intones: Let’s cut down a jungle/Let’s go start a war/Let’s go rape a co-ed.”  The hard-charging rock anthem “The Truth is a Lie” features verses like

“Bensonhurst was a publicity stunt
AIDS is a myth, first amendment’s fake
The sun revolves around the earth
And the holocaust never took place.”

If many of Larson’s songs in the show feel like anthems – catchy and rhythmic, but lacking lyrical complexity —  there are several that are more self-contained theater songs. In “Hosing the Furniture,” a manic housewife (Lauren Marcus) does house cleaning in the future, to a perky Broadway sound. The range and variety hinted at in this selection of the young man’s stray compositions offer a bittersweet gauge not just of Jonathan Larson’s talent, but of his promise. Larson would have turned 65 last month

The Jonathan Larson Project
Orpheum Theater
Running time: 90 minutes no intermission
Tickets: $69 – $164
Music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson
Conceived by Jennifer Ashley Tepper
Directed by John Simpkins
Choreographed by Byron Easley, scenic design by Michael Schweikardt, costume design by Tracy Christensen, lighting design by Adam Honoré and Shannon Clarke, sound design by Justin Stasiw, hair and wig design by J Jared Janas, video/projection design by Alex Basco Koch, music supervisor, co-arranger, orchestrator Charlie Rosen, music director Cynthia Meng, co-arranger Natalie Tenenbaum
Cast:  Adam Chanler-Berat, Taylor Iman Jones, Lauren Marcus, Andy Mientus and Jason Tam.