Theatre review: The Jonathan Larson Project

Jennifer Ashley Tepper's collection of lesser-known songs by Rent and tick, tick... BOOM! creator Jonathan Larson opens with a video medley of his best-known one, "Seasons of Love," being sung by different groups in different languages, and laments the fact that Larson never lived to see the effect his music had on people and musical theatre as a whole. Although as ever I have to wonder if there would have been anything like that much influence if he hadn't died young - his sudden death aged 35 the day before its first performance is so tied into the legend surrounding Rent and so perfectly fitting to its story that you have to wonder if it might have become a well-liked but obscure show without that unwanted publicity push, rather than a global phenomenon. Does The Jonathan Larson Project go any way to answer how much his success owes to the fact that it's posthumous?Well it certainly suggests that we missed out on a lot of much better work that he might have produced later in life:…