SEPTEMBER 30, 2015
When I first heard about the premise of “Hamilton,” it sounded like something the satirical newspaper The Onion would create if The Onion had a theater critic.
“The hottest Broadway show in years will be a musical based on a scholarly biography of the first Treasury Secretary of the United States. It will be performed almost entirely by a cast of actors of color who will be costumed in ruffled shirts, knee breeches and hoop skirts. The score will use the language of R&B, rap and hip-hop. And you’ll be lucky if you can score a ticket for $1500.”
Welcome to Broadway in September 2015. Welcome to “Hamilton.”
How could this possibly have happened? The origins of this project are one of the oddest in recent Broadway memory. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the genius behind “Hamilton” (and I can say genius because he was awarded the MacArthur Genius Grant on Monday for his work), was on vacation from starring in the Tony Award-winning musical he created called “In the Heights” when he picked up Ron Chernow’s acclaimed biography of Alexander Hamilton. (Not my idea of a beach book, but to each his own.)
Miranda noodled around with idea of turning the biography into a hip-hop musical which he then called “The Hamilton Mixtapes.” In 2009, he was asked to appear at the White House, and he performed what would become the musical’s opening number, “Alexander Hamilton,” which distilled a huge chunk of Chernow’s story of Hamilton’s early years into a single song. Encouraged by the response, he expanded the idea into a full musical, which was workshopped at a reading at Vassar in 2013.
That workshop led to a limited engagement this spring at New York’s Public Theater, where the show soon became a sensation, attracting patrons as diverse as Michelle Obama and Dick Cheney. When the downtown run ended in early May, there was enormous pressure on Miranda to move it uptown quickly to qualify for the 2015 Tony Awards. But Miranda resisted, choosing to tweak the show based on what he learned in its downtown run. He was proven right. “Hamilton” finally opened on August 6 to rave reviews — influential New York Times critic Ben Brantley, who liked the Broadway version even better, said
“I am loath to tell people to mortgage their houses and lease their children to acquire tickets to a hit Broadway show. But ‘Hamilton’…might just about be worth it.”
[For the record, Exact Change Today already has a mortgage and has no children to lease. But I got my tickets in April before the scalpers moved in.]
Enough about the history. Let’s get to the show. As the lights went down, I wanted to love it, but I was skeptical — the show can’t be that good. I was impressed by the “Alexander Hamilton” opening, as well as one of the show’s signature songs, “My Shot.” But “impressed” is not “loved.”
It was not until midway through Act 1 when Hamilton (Miranda) marries Eliza Schuyler, one of the socially-prominent Schuyler sisters, that something clicked. Eliza (a wonderful Phillipa Soo) was first introduced to Hamilton by her sister Angelica (the brilliant Renée Elise Goldsberry), and in the song “Satisfied,” a regretful Angelica rewinds history to pinpoint the moment where she could have had Hamilton (whom she secretly loved) for her own instead of helping her sister. The imaginative way the rewind is created and staged led me to think “I have never seen this in a theater before.” And “impressed” immediately became “loved.”
That love continued throughout the rest of the show, culminating in one of the most sustained standing ovations I’ve ever experienced in a theater. I went in a skeptic and came out a believer.
Director Thomas Kail’s staging is simple and effective, but “Hamilton” is the creation of Miranda, who stars and wrote the book, music and lyrics, a remarkable achievement. But both men are backed up by an ensemble that is impeccable. Among the standouts are Leslie Odom Jr. who creates an Aaron Burr who is both sympathetic and complex, Jonathan Groff whose effete King George makes condescension hilarious, and Daveed Diggs. who doubles as a knit-capped Marquis de Lafayette in Act 1 and portrays Act 2’s wild-haired Thomas Jefferson in the manner of Andre 3000 from Outkast. Look for these three to duke it out for the Supporting Actor Tony next year.
Will “Hamilton” be the musical landmark that many have claimed? Time will tell, but I suspect the answer will be “yes.” Don’t mortgage your house or lease your kids, but by all means, see “Hamilton.”
GRADE: A+
